WHO
TB REPORT - REPORTS & INDICES
News: 7.5 million new cases of TB in 2022:
WHO report
What's
in the news?
●
India
accounts for 27 percent of the total TB cases in the world,
according to the recently released Global TB Report 2023 by the World Health Organisation.
Key
takeaways:
●
Although several positive strides such as
increased access to treatment and more accurate molecular diagnostics have been
made by India towards the goal of
eliminating tuberculosis by 2025, five years ahead of the global target, it
continues to have the highest incidence of the bacterial infection.
Key
findings of the Report:
Findings
on cases:
●
Increase in reporting of TB cases,
crossing even the pre-pandemic high with 24.2 lakh cases in 2022.
●
Coverage
of treatment for the infection increased to 80%.
●
With the change in dataset, India’s TB
mortality dropped from 4.94 lakhs in 2021 to 3.31 lakhs in 2022.
○
This resulted in a reduction in India’s
contribution towards global mortality from 36 percent in the previous years to
26 percent in 2022.
●
Nearly 28.2 lakh people got TB in India in
2022, meaning one person gets TB every 11 seconds in India, according to the
report.
●
India’s contribution to the global burden
is 27%, which is down one percentage point from the previous year’s 28%.
Findings
on treatment:
●
The report acknowledged an increase in
coverage of TB treatment in India, increasing by 19 percent over the previous
year.
●
In fact, India was among only four
countries among the 30 high-burden countries in the world that were able to
achieve more than 80 percent treatment coverage.
●
Globally, the report notes, the treatment
coverage in 2022 reached the pre-pandemic levels of 70%.
Government
Measures:
●
The Union Health Ministry said that India
has undertaken several initiatives
towards TB elimination including active case finding, scaling up of more
accurate molecular testing to block level, screening services made available
through the health and wellness centres, and engagement of the private sector
as well.
●
The government also said that the Ni-kshay Mitra where people provide
additional nutritional support to TB patients has also resulted in the adoption
of over 11 lakh TB patients.
India’s
TB elimination target:
●
India has set a target of 2025 for
eliminating TB in the country.
●
The national strategic plan 2017-2025 sets
the target of no more than 44 new TB cases per lakh population by 2025.
●
The 2023 report pegs this number at 199
cases per lakh. Achieving this target is a big task as the plan had envisaged
an incidence of only 77 cases per lakh population by 2023.
●
The programme also aims to reduce the mortality to 3 deaths per lakh
population by 2025.
○
Even with the WHO accepting the lowered
estimates for India, this stands at 23 per lakh population.