World Health Organization has revealed a fact that TB is more popular in developing countries and majority of poor are suffering from this infection. India alone contributes one fifth of the world TB cases.

South-East Asia regional director of WHO, Samlee Plianbangchang, said on World Tuberculosis Day, India has high mortality and morbidity rate due to TB, but by the end of 2009, it was recorded that mortality rate has been reduced by one third and infection caused by TB has also reduced by half in India.

He further told that we need to overcome the economic and social barriers in India, most of TB programmes face difficulties, due to lack of education among population, poverty in large ratio and language and cultural differences. All these problems supplement to provide a huge challenge to TB prevention schemes.

WHO revealed that among TB patients throughout the globe, South-East Asia registered 2.2 million TB patients in 2009, among these TB patients around 4 percent are suffering from HIV infection also.

He also added, with this participation of patients as well as doctors the mortality rate has gone down and detection rate hike by around 25%, with treatment success rate over 90%.