TB-Free By 2030: World Races Against Time

With less than four years left to meet the 2030 deadline to end tuberculosis, the WHO South-East Asia Region has warned that the gains made so far are not enough and that closing the remaining gaps will require a much faster response.

The concern is particularly significant for India, which, along with Indonesia and China, continues to carry the world’s largest TB burden. The latest WHO estimates show India accounted for about 26% of all new TB cases globally in 2024 — roughly one in every four cases worldwide. India also accounted for 32% of the estimated global burden of multidrug- and rifampicin-resistant TB.

At the recently concluded WHO South-East Asia Regional Committee meeting at Dili, Timor Leste, member countries committed to stepping up early diagnosis, preventive treatment, drug-resistant TB care and financial protection for affected families.

But the numbers underline how difficult the road ahead will be.

The region, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s population, accounted for about 3.68 million new TB cases and 433,000 deaths in 2024 — around 34% of the global case burden.

Although TB incidence in the region has fallen 16% since 2015 and deaths by 23%, WHO says these improvements remain insufficient to achieve the End TB targets of an 80% reduction in incidence and a 90% reduction in deaths by 2030, said the WHO SAERO in its statement.

Globally too, the pace remains worrying. In 2024, 10.7 million people developed TB and 1.23 million died. The global reduction in incidence since 2015 was only about 12%, far below the 50% reduction that had been targeted for 2025.

“Tuberculosis is curable and preventable, yet it continues to take hundreds of thousands of lives in our region every year and pushes families into poverty,” said Dr Nilesh Buddha, Officer-in-Charge, WHO South-East Asia Region.

The financial burden is another major obstacle. Nearly 44% of TB-affected households in the region face catastrophic costs, rising to more than 80% among families dealing with drug-resistant TB. In 2024, around USD900 million was available for the regional TB response against an estimated requirement of USD3 billion.

At the same time, as per reports, global funding for tuberculosis (TB) prevention, diagnosis, and treatment stands at only USD5.9 billion annually, which is barely a quarter of the USD22 billion target set by the United Nations for 2027. Despite TB remaining one of the world's leading infectious killers, financing has stagnated since 2020 and faces severe rollbacks.

WHO has been therefore calling for TB services to be integrated more closely with primary healthcare, with greater use of rapid molecular diagnostics, active case-finding and preventive treatment for household contacts and other vulnerable groups.

For India, this means sustaining the gains made under its national TB programme while reaching people who remain outside routine health services. WHO data show that India remains among the countries with the largest gaps between estimated TB incidence and notified cases, highlighting the continuing challenge of finding patients early.

The emergence of drug-resistant TB adds another layer of concern. India alone accounted for nearly a third of the world's estimated MDR/RR-TB cases in 2024. In fact, four countries (India, China, the Philippines, and Russia) together accounted for more than half of the estimated global number of people who developed MDR or RR tuberculosis in 2024.

WHO has also stressed the importance of preparing for new TB vaccines. Regional modelling suggests that adding a TB vaccine from 2028, alongside stronger diagnosis, treatment and prevention, could avert about 1.45 million cases and 300,000 deaths by 2030, as per the WHO.