India accounts for 28% of 10.6 mn TB cases in ’21, says WHO report

NEW DELHI: Around 10.6 million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) globally in 2021, an increase of 4.5% from 2020, while 1.6 million patients died of the bacterial disease, according to the World Health Organization’s 2022 Global TB report.

With 28% cases, India was among the eight nations accounting for over two-thirds (or 68.3%) of the total TB patients’ count.

The other countries were Indonesia (9.2% cases), China (7.4%), the Philippines (7%), Pakistan (5.8%), Nigeria (4.4%), Bangladesh (3.6%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2.9%).

Of the total TB deaths, 187,000 patients were also positive for HIV. Nearly 82% of TB deaths among HIV-negative people occurred in the African and South-East Asia regions, with India alone accounting for 36% of such deaths, it said.

The burden of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) also increased by 3% globally between 2020 and 2021, with 450,000 new cases of TB (RR-TB) being reported in 2021.