The numbers the health ministry released on Friday deserve a cheer. By the ministry’s count, India’s estimated tuberculosis death rate fell from 28 to 18 per lakh people between 2015 and 2025, a 38% drop it sets against WHO’s 35% fall worldwide. WHO’s public pages confirm the 28 per lakh starting point and the world figure, but not yet the 38%, and the rounded 28 to 18 works out to about 36%, as our fact check found. Treatment success for drug-susceptible TB stands at 94%. For a disease that has killed Indians for centuries and still strikes a quarter of the world’s patients here, those are not small things.
Health Minister J P Nadda called it proof that “no TB patient is left behind”. The credit he gave to AI-assisted X-rays, nutrition support and volunteers is fair, and the drive to screen more than 25 crore people has found 14.97 lakh patients who had no symptoms. Each of them is a case caught before it spread.
The number that is missing
A good result is better when nobody can pick at it. According to a report published on Friday, the WHO report this year carries no incidence estimate for India at all. The WHO dataset describes the estimates as under review, pending finalisation, and a WHO official is quoted as saying they will follow once survey data are finalised, with an update expected in early 2027.
The reason is a population-level prevalence survey held in 2025 in 50 representative districts. Its results are being compared with the national survey of 2020 and 2021 and could change India’s estimates. The same report quotes an unnamed expert as expecting the new method to lower the estimated incidence, partly because the programme is working.
That may be good news. It is also a reminder that the death rate is an estimate, built on assumptions about how many people have the disease. When the assumptions are revised, the percentage changes with them.
The report also says cases notified in 2025 were 25.3 lakh, against 26.18 lakh in 2024, and that deaths fell to 2.63 lakh from just over 3 lakh. Fewer notified cases can mean less disease. They can also mean fewer people found. Without the survey, a reader cannot tell which.
The fair objection
The ministry will say that it has done nothing wrong. The WHO review is WHO’s decision, the survey takes time, and rushing out unfinished data would invite worse confusion. Quoting a mortality figure the ministry attributes to WHO’s report is not a sleight of hand, and the death rate is the number that matters most to a patient.
All of that is fair. It is also why the ministry should explain, not just announce. Celebration this week and a revised incidence figure next year, with nothing in between, is how credibility is lost.
What the ministry should do
First, publish the 2025 prevalence survey as soon as the analysis is final, with its method, its district list and its comparison with the 2020 and 2021 survey, so that independent researchers can check it.
Second, release the annual TB report that, according to the same account, was skipped this year. It usually appears in March around World TB Day and carries state-wise figures. Without it, the public sees national averages while the burden sits in particular states.
Third, put a date on the revised estimate and say plainly that the headline figures may change.
Fourth, report how many of the 14.97 lakh people found without symptoms started treatment and finished it, since screening is only worth what follows it.
India has real progress to show. It will be believed more easily if the ministry shows its working, including the part that is still unfinished.
The reporting behind this view
- 38%fall in India's TB death rate, 2015 to 2025, as the health ministry says; WHO puts the world's fall at 35%
- 25.3 lakhTB cases notified in India in 2025, from 26.18 lakh in 2024, according to a report of November 13, 2026
- 50districts covered by the 2025 prevalence survey, whose results are not yet published