India's drug-resistant TB patients face late diagnoses, confusing treatment

India also has the highest share (24%) of drug-resistant TB cases, i.e. patients resistant to one or more first line drugs used to treat the more common, drug-sensitive TB

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) patients in India face delayed diagnoses, different treatment pathways from both public and private health care systems and differing costs for the same treatments from different providers in an unregulated private health care sector, says a January 2019 study published in Public Library of Science (PLOS), a scientific journal.

In 2017, India had the world’s highest share (27%) and over a quarter of all TB cases globally, 2.7 million, and accounted for 32% (421,000) of deaths due to the disease--nearly a third of all TB deaths--as IndiaSpend