India's poor ranking is primarily because of the rise in cases of tuberculosis, diabetes, rheumatic heart diseases and chronic kidney disease.

March 6, 2016 - An indigenous and cost-effective diagnostic tool for tuberculosis (TB) is expected to be available in a year, Indian Council of Medical Research's (ICMR) Director General Soumya Swaminathan said. "A Bengaluru-based company has made the new diagnostic tool which is going to be more point-of-care and we hope it will be as good as GeneXpert test," she said on the sidelines of 17th International Congress on Infectious Diseases. "If our evaluation shows positive result, then it may replace GeneXpert. The idea is to reduce the cost and have an indigenous diagnostic tool," Swaminathan said.

The civic body is taking baby steps in streamlining the supply of protective masks in Asia's largest TB Hospital at Sewri, after protests intensified among its workers following lack of equipment. While the 1,000-bed Guru Teg Bahadur TB Hospital requires up to 12,000 N-95 masks every month for its 1,200-odd staff, not more than 3,000 are supplied. But this is set to change, said Dr Rajendra Nanavare, superintendent of the hospital.

Imagine a new diagnostic test that needs people to only breathe into a device and in six minutes flat, they would be told if they have tuberculosis (TB) or not. With India earning notoriety for being the world’s TB capital and current sputum detection tests that require at least 24 hours for results, such a device would be greatly appreciated. Bringing this technology to the city is a team of three researchers from Lonavla’s Sinhgad College of Pharmaceutical Sciences. They recently won an international competition, Grand Challenges Canada, funded by the Canadian government and have been awarded $1 lakh (Rs54 lakh) for optimisation and validation of the test in India.