India TB Report-2024: Missing cases shrinking, 95% got treatment in 2023

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Health

Context:

The gap between the estimated number and actual cases of tuberculosis (TB) is closing, according to the India TB Report 2024 released by the Union Health ministry.

More on news:

This is an important marker as the “missing cases” are assumed to not have received treatment, continuing to spread the infection to others.
There were only 2.3 lakh missing cases in 2023, as compared to 3.2 lakh the year before, the report states.
This gap has been reducing over the years, especially with the government’s Ni-kshay portal tracking all TB patients.
Last year, when the in-country model was used to estimate the number of cases and deaths due to tuberculosis, there was a sudden drop in the mortality figures seen in the global report released by the WHO.

Key highlights of the report:

According to the report, the majority of the TB cases are still reported by the government health centers, even as there has been an uptick in notifications by the private sector.
Nearly 33% or 8.4 lakh of the 25.5 lakh cases reported in 2023 came from the private sector.
To compare, only 1.9 lakh cases were reported by the private sector in 2015, the year considered to be the baseline by the programme that is geared towards the elimination of the disease.
The estimated incidence of TB in 2023 increased slightly to 27.8 lakh from the previous year’s estimate of 27.4 lakh.
The mortality due to the infection remained the same at 3.2 lakh as per the data.
These estimates are based on a new methodology that India developed and has since been accepted by the World Health Organisation.
India’s TB mortality dropped from 94 lakhs in 2021 to 3.31 lakhs in 2022.
The number of cases reported in a year also went down from 4 lakh in 2021 as per the previous method to 27.4 lakh in 2022, according to the data.
The report shows that India reached its 2023 target of initiating treatment in 95% of patients diagnosed with the infection.
It says 58% of those diagnosed were offered a test to check whether their infection was resistant to the first line drugs, an increase from 25% in 2015.

About National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme:

VISION: TB-Free India with zero deaths, disease and poverty due to tuberculosis
GOAL: To achieve a rapid decline in burden of TB, morbidity and mortality while working towards elimination of TB in India by 2025
The National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP), earlier known as the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), is the Public Health initiative of the Government of India that organizes its anti-Tuberculosis efforts.
It functions as a flagship component of the National Health Mission (NHM) and provides technical and managerial leadership to anti-tuberculosis activities in the country.
As per the National Strategic Plan 2017–25, the program has a vision of achieving a “TB free India”, with a strategy under the broad themes of “Prevent, Detect, Treat and Build pillars for universal coverage and social protection“.
The program provides various free of cost, quality tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment services across the country through the government health system.