Fight against TB needs more impetus
Just when we believed that the fight against Tuberculosis has been won, some hard facts have reminded us that the fight seems far from over. Presently, India accounted for the highest number of TB cases in 2024, followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, China, and Pakistan, the WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 has claimed.
This latest finding by the WHO report has come at a time when just a year back most people who developed TB belonged to regions of South-East Asia (34 per cent), the Western Pacific (27 per cent) and Africa (25 per cent), with smaller proportions in the Eastern Mediterranean (8.6 per cent), the Americas (3.3 per cent) and Europe (1.9 per cent).
The 30 high-TB burden countries accounted for 87 per cent of all estimated incident cases worldwide, with eight of these countries accounting for two-thirds (67 per cent) of the global total.
India registered the highest, 25 per cent, of these cases, followed by Indonesia (10 per cent), the Philippines (6.8 per cent), China (6.5 per cent), Pakistan (6.3 per cent), Nigeria (4.8 per cent, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.9 per cent), and Bangladesh (3.6 per cent).
Notably, TB remains a major global public health problem and progress in reducing the burden of disease falls far short of 2030 targets in most parts of the world.
TB is impacting many developing regions across the globe and India surfacing on the top of the list is a serious health concern for the health planners in the country. The increased number of TB cases is a fair indicator that the fight against the disease has to be taken much more seriously and the results achieved to control the disease need to be followed up seriously.
The WHO report also indicated that India accounted for the highest number of people estimated to have developed Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) MD and Rifampicin-resistant TB, at 32 per cent.
Four countries, including India, accounted for more than half of the global number of such patients. Of the remaining, China accounted for 7.1 per cent, the Philippines, 7.1 per cent and the Russian Federation, 6.7 per cent.
Besides, India alone accounted for 28 per cent of deaths due to TB globally and therefore enough funds need to be put in to fight the disease so that its traces may vanish completely.
However, it may seem ironic that fund allocation for the TB response remains grossly inadequate and has been stagnating not only in the developing world but even the developed nations fail to contribute generously enough.
Funding for the provision of TB prevention, diagnosis, and treatment amounted to USD 5.9 billion in 2024, and funding for TB research was USD 1.2 billion in 2023. These figures are 27 per cent and 24 per cent of the global targets of USD 22 billion and USD 5 billion annually by 2027.
