India logged highest number of TB cases in 2024: WHO report

India accounted for the highest number of TB cases in 2024, followed by Indonesia, the Philippines, China, and Pakistan, said the WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2025, as it called for increased funding to eradicate the disease.

Geographically, most people who developed TB in 2024 were in the WHO regions of South-East Asia (34 per cent), the Western Pacific (27 per cent) and Africa (25 per cent), with smaller proportions in the Eastern Mediterranean (8.6 per cent), the Americas (3.3 per cent) and Europe (1.9 per cent), the report said.

The 30 high-TB burden countries accounted for 87 per cent of all estimated incident cases worldwide, with eight of these countries accounting for two-thirds (67 per cent) of the global total.

India registered the highest, 25 per cent, of these cases, followed by Indonesia (10 per cent), the Philippines (6.8 per cent), China (6.5 per cent), Pakistan (6.3 per cent), Nigeria (4.8 per cent, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.9 per cent), and Bangladesh (3.6 per cent).

The top five countries accounted for 55 per cent of the global total.

The WHO observed that TB remains a major global public health problem and progress in reducing the burden of disease falls far short of 2030 targets in most parts of the world.

It, however, said that after setbacks from the Covid-19 pandemic, most indicators were moving in the right direction.

Money allocation for the TB response remains grossly inadequate and has been stagnating, the report said.