India TB: Can vaccines help India triumph over tuberculosis? - BBC News

India is far from achieving its stated goal of eliminating tuberculosis by 2025.

15 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Every two minutes one person dies of the disease in India, according to the WHOBy Nikhila HenryBBC News, DelhiIn 2018, India set for itself the lofty goal of eliminating pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) by 2025 - five years ahead of the deadline set by the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

In March 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated this commitment at the One World TB Summit, held in the northern city of Varanasi.

But the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Global Tuberculosis Report paints a different picture - every two minutes, one person dies of the disease in India.

According to the report, India accounted for the highest global TB burden, with 27% of the 10.6 million people diagnosed with the infection in 2022. The country is also home to 47% of people who developed multi-drug resistant infection which is unresponsive or resistant to at least two of the first line of anti-TB drugs the same year.

While experts say testing and treatment remain the best-known ways to tackle the disease, India has also invested in trying to find an effective TB vaccine - since 2019, scientists have been testing two vaccines in seven research centres.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67647054?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

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