Key points
- India's estimated TB death rate fell 38% between 2015 and 2025, against 35% worldwide.
- The rate is 18 deaths per lakh people, down from 28, and treatment success is 94%.
- More than 25 crore people have been screened since December 7, 2024, and 48.64 lakh TB cases found.
India’s estimated tuberculosis death rate has fallen 38% since 2015, faster than the 35% decline worldwide, according to the WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2026, released on Thursday, November 12. Union Health Minister J P Nadda welcomed the figures in a post on X on Friday, November 13, calling the result proof that “no TB patient is left behind”.
What the report says
The estimated mortality rate for India dropped from 28 deaths per lakh population in 2015 to 18 in 2025. The health ministry’s statement expressed the same figures as 280 and 180 per million. The estimate draws on Registrar General of India and Sample Registration System data, community verbal autopsies and the programme’s own Ni-kshay reporting platform.
The treatment success rate for drug-susceptible TB stands at 94%. The health ministry says 96% of the funding the national TB programme needs is met from domestic resources.
India still carries the largest share of the disease. The report puts the country at 25% of global TB cases in 2025. Most people who develop TB live in 30 high-burden countries, and India is one of four countries that together accounted for more than half of the world’s multidrug-resistant TB cases in 2025. Both WHO and the government said the incidence of drug-resistant TB is gradually declining.
What Nadda said
In his post, Nadda said India’s fight against tuberculosis was “showing encouraging results” and described the effort as “a nationwide Jan Andolan, powered by technology, community participation and patient-centric care”. He said the government would “continue moving towards a TB-Mukt Bharat”.
He pointed to AI-enabled diagnostics, nutritional support under the Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana and the volunteers known as Ni-kshay Mitras as the tools behind the numbers.
The screening drive behind the figures
The ministry credits the TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, whose first 100-day campaign began on December 7, 2024, in 347 high-priority districts across 33 states and Union Territories before going nationwide. A second 100-day campaign began on March 24, 2026, aimed at 1.58 lakh high-risk villages and wards.
From December 7, 2024, to November 8, 2026, more than 25 crore people were screened. More than 11 crore chest X-rays and 3 crore molecular tests were done. The drive found 48.64 lakh TB cases, among them 14.97 lakh people who had no symptoms. A total of 67,933 panchayats were declared TB-free in 2025.
The ministry is also building JOSH teams at block and ward level, led by Class-I officers and supported by five National Cadet Corps cadets and five MY Bharat volunteers each.
How we got here
A year ago the picture was less favourable. The WHO Global TB Report 2025 put India’s TB incidence at 187 per lakh people in 2024, down 21% from 237 in 2015, nearly double the global fall of 12%. The death rate that year was estimated at 21 per lakh, a 25% decline from 28, which Nadda cited in the Lok Sabha on December 12, 2025.
That report said 26.18 lakh patients were diagnosed in 2024 out of an estimated 27 lakh cases, so fewer than 1 lakh people were missed, against 15 lakh in 2015. Treatment coverage had risen from 53% to over 92%, and treatment success was then 90%, above the global 88%.
Set against that, the new report has the death rate at 18 per lakh in 2025, three points below the 2024 estimate, and treatment success at 94%.
Why it matters
TB is a curable disease, and India still has a quarter of the world’s cases, so the death rate is the figure that shows whether diagnosis and treatment are reaching people. Screening that finds cases before symptoms appear, 14.97 lakh of them so far, is how the ministry says it is catching patients earlier. Nutritional support under Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana is one of the measures Nadda highlighted for patients on treatment.
One caution comes from the data itself. India’s own national TB prevalence survey, conducted by ICMR-NIRT in 2025, has been shared with WHO and is under technical discussion. WHO has said it will publish an updated India country profile once that work and the analysis of district-level sentinel surveillance data with the Central TB Division and the Indian Council of Medical Research are complete. The estimates for India could change when that happens.
What happens next
The second 100-day campaign continues in high-risk villages and wards, and the youth JOSH teams are being formed. The next marker is WHO’s revised India country profile, which will show how the prevalence survey changes the national picture.
The documents
- Union Health Minister J P Nadda says India's TB incidence has fallen 21 per cent since 2015News On AIR, December 12, 2025