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Journalism of Courage
Take a look at the essential events, concepts, terms, quotes, or phenomena every day and brush up your knowledge. Here’s your UPSC Current Affairs knowledge nugget for today on tuberculosis and Global TB Report 2025.
(Relevance: UPSC has asked questions related to health. In this regard, learning about the Global TB Report is important. The findings of the Global TB Report 2025 are also crucial, as the Union Health Ministry has not released detailed data for 2024 so far. Usually, the government releases the India TB report in March every year, coinciding with World TB Day. This year, however, the report has not come out.)
While the burden of tuberculosis in India continues to decline, the country is nowhere close to achieving elimination, according to the Global TB Report 2025, released on November 12. In 2024, India recorded around 27.1 lakh cases and more than three lakh deaths, making it one of the top contributors to the number of TB cases across the world, the analysis said. In this context, let’s know the key highlights of this year’s TB report and India’s efforts for eliminating TB.
1. The Global TB Report 2025 was released by the World Health Organisation on November 12. It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic, and of progress in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease, at global, regional and country levels.
2. This year’s report shows that India has achieved only a 21% reduction in new cases and a 28% reduction in deaths between 2015 and 2024. This does not even come close to the End TB milestones for 2025 — a 50% reduction in TB incidence and 75% reduction in TB deaths.
3. In fact, it essentially means that India in 2024 was able to meet only half of the global milestones set for 2020 — reducing TB cases by 20% and deaths by 35% as compared to 2015. But this reduction achieved by India is ahead of the global average. TB incidence reduced only by 12% between 2015 and 2024 across the world.
4. According to the report, in 2024, India recorded around 27.1 lakh cases and more than three lakh deaths, making it one of the top contributors to the number of TB cases across the world.
5. There is a significant improvement in India’s treatment coverage, which stood at 92% in 2024, increasing from 85% in 2023. The expansion of treatment coverage came due to initiatives such as the BPaL regimen, which can cut the treatment time for resistant infections to six months from a previous 18 to 24 months.
| BPaL Regimen |
| Pretomanid (Pa) is used in combination with bedaquiline (B), linezolid (L) and sometimes moxifloxacin (M) to form BPaL and BPaLM. India is the only global supplier of pretomanid, a key drug within the BPaL regimen. |
6. India also continues to be a big contributor towards drug-resistant TB, accounting for nearly a third of the global cases. While the burden of such resistant infections has not reduced, it has not increased significantly either.
7. The report also shows that the success rate of TB treatment — for those who initiated their treatment in 2023 — stood at 90%. The Union Health Ministry said that this was ahead of the global success rate of 88%.
1. TB is caused by an organism called mycobacterium tuberculosis, which mainly affects the lungs, but can also impact other parts of the body. TB spreads through the air when an infected individual coughs, sneezes, or speaks.
2. Last year, TB was the deadliest infectious killer globally, as it infected 10.7 million people and killed 1.23 million.
3. Once diagnosed, the treatment depends on whether it is drug-resistant or simple tuberculosis. According to experts, when recovering from TB, it is critical to consume a well-balanced and nutritious diet to help strengthen the immune system.
In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India’s ambitious target of eliminating TB by 2025, five years ahead of the global target. Although there has been a consistent decline in the estimated number of TB cases — as well as the rate of TB cases per 100,000 population — India is nowhere close to its target of eliminating the bacterial disease by 2025. Various efforts have been undertaken to eliminate TB, such as:
1. In India, the government offers free medicines for TB treatment, which is essential as the medicines can be expensive and the therapy may continue for as long as two years.
2. An online Ni-kshay portal has been set up to track the notified TB cases. The government also launched a community engagement program where Ni-kshay Mitras can adopt TB patients and provide them with monthly nutritional support.
| Do you know? |
| While TB elimination is defined as less than one case per million population, the WHO End TB strategy targets an 80% decline in new TB cases and 90% decline in TB deaths by 2030 as compared to the baseline year of 2015. |
3. One of the big challenges with tuberculosis treatment is the long duration for which people have to continue taking their medicines. The government has been working on devising innovative ways to ensure compliance such as pill boxes that track and remind the patient to take medicine as well as introducing shorter courses of treatment.
4. In addition to shorter courses of treatment, such as BPaL, the government has also introduced other innovations, such as AI-enabled hand-held X-ray devices that can detect even asymptomatic TB cases during community screening. This was used during the 100-day campaign launched by the government in December last year, with many of the measures introduced after the 100 days in areas other than the high-risk districts.
5. Newer drugs such as Bedaquiline and Delamanid for the treatment of drug-resistant TB have been included in the government’s basket of drugs provided to free TB patients.
1. World Tuberculosis Day, observed on March 24 every year, aims to increase public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis and the numerous efforts being taken to eliminate the disease. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.
2. The theme of this year is “Yes! We Can End TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver”, highlights the importance of stronger commitments and action, especially against rising drug-resistant TB.
With reference to the Global TB Report 2025, consider the following statements:
1. The Global TB Report 2025 shows that India has achieved only a 21% reduction in new cases and a 28% reduction in deaths between 2015 and 2024.
2. The Global TB Report shows significant improvement in India’s treatment coverage.
3. In TB cases reduction, India is far below the global average.
4. The report is published by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
How many of the statements given above are correct?
(a) Only one
(b) Only two
(c) Only three
(d) All four
| Answer Key |
| (b) |
(Sources: Why hasn’t India met its target of eliminating TB by 2025?)
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