India leads list of nations where TB cases go unreported: WHO

India leads the list of countries with high incidence of tuberculosis (TB). What is more disturbing is that it also leads the list of countries where TB cases go unreported. The country accounted for 31 per cent of the total cases in the world that went unreported last year, says World Global Tuberculosis Report, published by WHO on Wednesday.
 
The report says that total 2.9 million TB cases are being missed every year. Of this, 75 per cent cases (people, who were either not diagnosed or diagnosed but not reported to national TB control programmes) were in 12 countries. India accounts for 0.9 million (31 per cent) cases that go unreported.

Other countries in the list are South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Philippines and Myanmar.

Report findings  says India accounted for 26 per cent of total TB cases in the world last year. Majority of cases worldwide in 2012 were in south-east Asia (29 per cent), followed by African region with 27 per cent and Western Pacific regions with 19 per cent TB cases. India and China accounted for  26 per cent and 12 per cent of total cases, respectively.

The global burden of TB remains enormous. In 2012, around 8.6 million people got infected with TB and 1.3 million people died of the disease (940,000 people who died were HIV-negative and 320,000 were HIV-positive). Among these, an estimated 170,000 were suffering from multiple drug resistant or MDR-TB.

WHO estimates that 450, 000 people fell ill with MDR-TB in 2012 alone. China, India and the Russian Federation have the highest burden of MDR-TB followed by 24 other countries.

TB mortality rate has declined by 45 per cent in the world since 1990 and WHO said that the Stop TB Partnership target of a 50 per cent reduction by 2015 is within reach.  Mortality and incidence rates are falling in all six WHO regions.

For achieving the millennium development goal in TB treatment by 2015, WHO suggests to address challenges like detecting three million missing cases and also controlling drug-resistant TB.

This is the eighteenth global report on TB published by WHO in a series that started in 1997. The report provides assessment of progress in TB control campaign and progress in implementing and ´¼ünancing TB prevention, care and control at global, regional and country levels using data reported by 197 countries.