India accounted for the highest number of tuberculosis cases globally in 2024, the World Health Organisation said in a report released on Wednesday. The country recorded a quarter of the cases worldwide.

The Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 stated that just eight countries account for 67% of the global total of the disease, with India leading the list at 25%, followed by Indonesia at 10%, the Philippines at 6.8%, China at 6.5% and Pakistan at 6.3%.

The other countries are Nigeria at 4.8%, the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 3.9% and Bangladesh at 3.6%.

The report stated that India’s tuberculosis rate stood at 187 per one lakh population. The rate has reduced significantly by 21% from 2015 when the number stood at 237 per one lakh population.

However, it was still short of the elimination target set by the Union government of reducing the burden to 77 cases per one lakh population by 2025, the Deccan Herald reported. In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a deadline of 2025 for eliminating tuberculosis.

The United Nations, on its part, has set a goal to eliminate the disease by 2030.

Tuberculosis mortality figures also improved marginally to 21 per one lakh population in 2024, as per the WHO report on Wednesday. However, this was again over three times higher than the elimination target set by the Union government, the newspaper reported.

As per the report, India recorded a third of the globe’s drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in 2024.

It stated that four countries accounted for more than half of the number of persons across the globe estimated to have developed multi-drug resistant and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis in 2024. This included India at 32%, China and the Philippines at over 7%, and Russia at 6.7%.

Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is a form of the disease that is resistant to rifampicin and isoniazid, which is a combination of two antibiotics. Rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that are no longer susceptible to rifampicin, among the primary medicines used to treat the disease.

The World Health Organisation also noted that the number of persons susceptible to developing drug-resistant tuberculosis each year has gradually declined, adding that those with multi-drug resistant or rifampicin-resistant variants of the disease accounted for 3.2% of the total burden in 2024.

More than 1,64,000 persons also received treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis in 2024.

Citing the Global Tuberculosis Report 2025, the Union Health Ministry on Thursday said that India’s “innovative case finding approach” had led to its treatment coverage to surge to over 92% in 2024, from 53% in 2015.

About 26.18 lakh tuberculosis patients were diagnosed in 2024, out of an estimated incidence of 27 lakh cases, the ministry said in a statement.

“This has helped reduce the number of ‘missing cases’ – those who had TB but were not reported to the programme – from an estimated 15 lakhs in 2015 to less than one lakh in 2024,” it said. “Also there is no significant increase in the number of MDR [Multi-drug resistant] TB patients in the country.”

The statement added: “Similarly, India’s TB mortality rate has decreased from 28 per lakh population in 2015 to 21 per lakh population in 2024, reflecting significant progress in reducing deaths due to TB.”

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