Overview
- The World Health Organization’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2026, published Thursday, recorded a 38% fall in India’s TB mortality since 2015 and a 94% treatment success rate for drug‑susceptible TB.
- India’s TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan ran intensified screening campaigns from December 2024 through November 8, 2026 that reached more than 250 million people and identified about 4.86 million new cases, including roughly 1.49 million people without symptoms.
- The government expanded diagnostics by scaling AI‑enabled chest X‑rays and molecular tests such as Truenat and GeneXpert while exploring near‑point‑of‑care molecular assays and non‑sputum sampling to bring confirmatory testing closer to communities.
- Despite gains, India still accounted for about 25% of global TB cases in 2025 and remained among the countries with a high burden of multidrug‑resistant TB, although WHO and health officials report MDR‑TB incidence is gradually declining.
- An ICMR‑NIRT national prevalence survey is under WHO technical review and could change incidence estimates when a revised country profile is published in early 2027, and India says roughly 96% of TB programme funding comes from domestic sources while patient support schemes aim to reduce catastrophic household costs.