An estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with tuberculosis (TB) worldwide in 2025, a decline of 75,000 from the previous year, while India continued to account for about a quarter of the global disease burden, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Tuberculosis Report 2026, released on Thursday.
Despite carrying the world’s largest TB burden, India outpaced global progress on key indicators. The Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) National TB Prevalence Survey found that nearly half of people with TB have no symptoms. In response, India shifted its focus from waiting for patients to visit clinics to actively identifying cases in communities.
The global TB, the report added, incidence rate declined by 1.6% between 2024 and 2025, from 131 to 129 cases per one lakh people. However, the reduction remains far below the World Health Organization’s End TB Strategy milestones, which called for a 50% decline in TB incidence by 2025 and an 80% reduction by 2030, compared with 2015 levels. Between 2015 and 2025, the global incidence rate fell by 14%. The 30 countries with a high TB burden accounted for 88% of the estimated global cases in 2025. Eight countries accounted for about two-thirds of the total, with India alone contributing nearly a quarter, followed by Indonesia (10%), the Philippines (6.8%), China (6.5%), Pakistan (6.4%), Nigeria (4.9%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.9%) and Bangladesh (3.7%). Between 2015 and 2024, India’s TB incidence fell by 21%, nearly twice the global rate, while deaths fell by 25% and treatment coverage rose from 53% to 92%. Under the TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) has deployed AI-compatible handheld X-ray machines for community screening, expanded molecular testing to nearly 11,000 facilities, and provided nutritional support through the Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana and Ni-kshay Mitras. India recorded a 38% reduction in TB mortality since 2015, compared with a global decline of 35%, alongside a 94% treatment success rate among patients with drug-susceptible TB, according to the report.
Tuberculosis remained the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent worldwide and ranked 13th among all causes of death, the report said. India’s progress in TB prevention and treatment “In recent years, the National TB Elimination Programme in India has made substantial efforts to improve TB prevention and care, with the goal of accelerating reductions in TB mortality and TB incidence… India has established a system for district-level sentinel surveillance of population-level trends in the prevalence of TB disease and TB infection,” it said.
Last year’s report also highlighted progress in India.
