India reports sharp rise in tuberculosis last year as cases up 19%

India recorded a total of 19,33,381 new and relapsed tuberculosis patients in 2021 marking a rise of 19 percent over the previous year, said the annual TB report released by health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on March 24.

The report launched on World TB Day also said that 4.93 lakh deaths, excluding HIV patients, due to the infectious disease were estimated for the country in 2020, which was 13 percent higher than the previous year.

India reports the highest number of TB cases globally, comprising over 26 percent of total cases and 34 percent of the deaths due to the bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs.

The country has set a target of eliminating the highly contagious disease by 2025 but it looks like an uphill task going by the numbers being reported currently.

Meanwhile the latest report has noted that there was a brief decline in TB notifications around the months corresponding to India’s two major COVID-19 waves but the numbers were later reclaimed by the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP).

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“Accordingly, 2021 witnessed a 19% increase from the previous year in TB patients’ notification—the total number of incident TB patients (new and relapse) notified during 2021 were 19,33,381 as opposed to that of 16,28,161 in 2020,” said the report.

It added that estimated mortality rate among all forms of TB—which included drug resistant and extremely drug resistant TB—was 37 per 100,000 population in 2020, as per the Global TB Report 2021.

There has been a slight increase in the mortality rate due to all forms of TB between 2019 and 2020 by 11 percent in the country, the report said.

Results of a national TB prevalence survey, carried out between 2019 and 2021, were also released and showed that the prevalence of microbiologically confirmed pulmonary in those above 15 years of age was 316 per lakh population and varied from 151 per lakh (Kerala) to 534 per lakh (Delhi).

The prevalence of all forms of TB for all ages in India was 312 per lakh population for the year 2021 and the highest prevalence for all forms of TB was 747 per lakh in Delhi and the lowest was 137 per lakh population.

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The findings showed that higher prevalence of pulmonary TB was observed in older age group, males, malnourished, smokers, alcoholics and known diabetics.

It also showed that the majority (64 percent) of symptomatic population did not seek health care services. The reasons were ignoring the symptoms (68 percent), not recognising the symptoms as TB (18 percent), self-treatment (12 percent) and couldn’t afford to seek care (2 percent).

Among the 36 per cent of survey participants who sought care for their symptoms, there was equal preference for government and private facilities