The 2025 milestones of the End TB Strategy are a 50% reduction in the TB incidence rate and a 75% reduction in the total number of TB deaths compared with 2015.According to the report, there has been a reduction of 18% in a change in the TB incidence rate from 2015-2023, while the total number of deaths in the same period saw a reduction of 24% in India.It said TB treatment coverage (notified new and relapse cases) saw 85% coverage.A significant number of new TB cases are driven by five major risk factors: undernutrition, HIV infection, alcohol use disorders, smoking (especially among men), and diabetes.It said that tackling these issues, along with critical determinants like poverty and GDP per capita, requires coordinated multisectoral action.In India, the same factors are also at play regarding new TB cases. In 2022, an estimated 3,73,000 people were suffering from TB due to undernutrition in India, followed by 2,53,000 people infected with it due to alcohol use disorders.Diabetes was another reason for new TB cases. An estimated 1,03,000 people who had diabetes got this infectious disease in India. Smoking caused 96,000 people to be infected with TB. HIV follows with 38,000 people being infected.In a post on X, Prof. Soumya Swaminathan, principle advisor at the Union Health Ministry for the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme, said, “Risk factors for TB vary by location—important to understand which ones are important in each setting…In India, undernutrition drives TB! Reducing the burden of TB means we have to address malnutrition.”The report said that while globally, the number of TB-related deaths decreased from 1.32 million in 2022 to 1.25 million in 2023, the total number of people falling ill rose slightly to an estimated 10.8 million in 2023. “The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage when we have the tools to prevent it, detect it and treat it,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
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