The way forward is to invest in TB control, take public health benefits – free drugs and testing – to the unknown number of privately-treated patients.

It is a matter of great tragedy that tuberculosis (TB), despite being a curable infectious disease, continues to kill over 1.5 million people every year. Nearly 9.5 million new cases of TB occur worldwide every year. Of these, nearly 3 million TB patients are considered "missing" -- they are either not diagnosed, or not reported to TB control programs.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health threat, and it is estimated that by 2050, 10 million lives a year and a cumulative US$100 trillion of economic output are at risk due to the rise of drug-resistant infections, if we do not find solutions to tackle the problem.

June 8, 2016 - As the Prime Minister of India speaks to the US Congress this week, a neglected epidemic threatens India's progress. It's not Ebola or Zika - but rather tuberculosis, an ancient disease that silently kills one Indian every 90 seconds. In one year's time, TB will sicken over 2.2 million Indians, and kill 300,000. Between 2006 and 2014, TB cost the Indian economy a staggering $340 billion. Because TB strikes people in the prime of their lives, it's the 3rd leading cause of healthy years of life lost.

In 2014, for the first time ever, tuberculosis (TB) caused more deaths worldwide than HIV/AIDS making TB the world’s biggest infectious disease killer. TB killed 1.5 million people in 2014, ahead of HIV/AIDS, which was responsible for 1.2 million deaths in the same year. The WHO Global TB Report also revealed that India continues to be the country with the highest TB burden with nearly one-fourth of the global burden.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health emergency, and experts are concerned that the end of the age of antimicrobials is imminent [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6]. Since the introduction of antimicrobials nearly a century ago, microbes have evolved a variety of methods to resist these drugs. Today, the world is dealing with ‘superbugs’ that are virtually untreatable, including drug-resistant gonorrhea, carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and extended-spectrum-beta-lactamase producing strains [5]. The antibiotic pipeline is running dry, and AMR is threatening to undo major gains made in the control of infectious diseases. Models suggest that 300 million people are expected to die prematurely because of AMR over the next 35 years and the world’s GDP will be 2–3.5% lower than it otherwise would be in 2050 [6]. This translates into a loss of 60–100 trillion USD worth of economic output by 2050.

Prof Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD, of McGill University compiled links to several helpful resources, including TB diagnostics landscape and market analyses, target product profiles for priority TB diagnostics, and a list of frequently asked questions to facilitate the development of new TB diagnostic tools.

How is the ‘End TB Strategy’ relevant in the Indian context, and how can India be a world leader in implementing the End TB Strategy?

Although much effort has gone into tuberculosis control, reduction in incidence has been disappointingly slow. India is a good example. Although India's Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) covers the entire country, and has met the 2015 targets, India continues to report over 2 million cases every year, and accounts for 1 of the 3 million “missing cases” that are either not diagnosed, or not reported. 

Writing in observation of World Tuberculosis Day 2015, for which the Stop TB Partnership has established the theme "Reach, Treat, Cure Everyone," Madhukar Pai and Puneet Dewan call on national TB programs to retool in order to meet the ambitious goal of ending TB by 2035.