NEW DELHI: India’s tuberculosis incidence dropped marginally by 0.5 per cent between 2015 and 2020 and failed to meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) END-TB milestone for 2020, according to new global research published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.
The WHO End TB Strategy aims for a 90 per cent reduction in TB deaths and an 80 per cent reduction in the incidence rate by 2030, compared to the baseline figures of 2015. The 2020 milestones include a 20 per cent reduction in the TB incidence rate and a 35 per cent reduction in deaths.
The latest study estimated that the incidence of TB across all ages in India was 213 cases per one lakh population in 2020, well above the WHO’s milestone figure (for India) of 171 per one lakh population. Deaths due to the bacterial infectious disease in the same year were estimated to be between 3.5-5 lakh, again much above the mortality milestone of 2.7-3.2 lakh set for India.
