India contributes about one-fourth of the world's tuberculosis burden: ICMR report
NEW DELHI: India contributes about one-fourth of the world's tuberculosis (TB) burden, with around 2.5 million new cases and nearly 3,00,000 deaths annually, said an ICMR report released on Wednesday. India has made significant advances through the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP), utilising molecular diagnostics, digital health technologies, and social support systems. Despite these improvements, India still bears a high TB burden, contributing to approximately 27% of global TB cases, hindered by socioeconomic factors, malnutrition, comorbidities, and disruptions caused by COVID-19, according to the report by the Indian Council for Medical Research-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis. India had aimed to eliminate TB by 2025, ahead of the global mandate of 2030. The report, released by Union Health Minister JP Nadda, said over the past decade, the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) has introduced a range of initiatives aimed at achieving the country's goal of TB elimination by 2030. These initiatives include free nationwide diagnosis and treatment, rapid expansion of molecular diagnostics, shorter treatment regimens for drug-resistant TB, scaling up active case finding, TB preventive therapy (TP), 3HP regimens and nutritional support through the Nikshay Poshan Yojana. The Nikshay digital platform has become central to improving case notification, treatment adherence, and outcome monitoring, said the report Indias progress in addressing the challenge of tuberculosis stakeholder engagement for strengthening TB care using public-private partnership, patient-centered service delivery models and integration of digital health technologies. NTEP continues to strengthen its four-pillar strategy of Detect, Treat, Prevent, and Build under the National Strategic Plan for TB Elimination. This includes early detection and accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, prevention through community partnerships and TB prophylaxis, and capacity-building at all levels. Continued emphasis on public-private collaboration, digital integration, and patient-centred strategies is considered vital to accelerating progress toward TB elimination in India, it added. In line with this, the country has experienced a rapid expansion in diagnostics, with a total of 8,415 molecular diagnostic tools currently implemented across India. NTEP has included several new diagnostics, notably molecular tests such as CB-NAAT and TRUE-NAAT. Shorter treatment regimens are now accessible to adults with drug-resistant tuberculosis. Despite significant advances in detection and reporting, marked by closing the notification gap by 100,000 cases, India continues to bear a major portion of the global TB burden. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted programme operations, as much of the TB workforce was reassigned to pandemic control, compromising continuity of care and surveillance, it added. The report also pointed out that malnutrition remains one of the most critical barriers to effective TB prevention and treatment in India. Undernutrition not only increases vulnerability to TB but also worsens disease outcomes and hampers medication tolerance. Most TB patients who are malnourished seek treatment late, often presenting with severely low body weight (15-20 kg), which limits their ability to tolerate anti-TB therapy. Food insecurity among TB patients and their households compounds this problem, increasing the risk of treatment failure and mortality, the report highlighted.
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