Find ALL TB, Treat ALL TB, prevent ALL TB to end TB: Missing people with TB is a jolt to efforts to end TB
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Can we ever end tuberculosis (TB) - the deadliest infectious disease on Earth - without ensuring that every single person who takes an initial TB test receives a truly effective one? A test that accurately and rapidly detects active TB disease. A test that misses no one. Because finding TB early and accurately is not optional - it is the indispensable lynchpin, the non-negotiable gateway to the entire treatment and care pathway.
"If we miss people with active TB disease due to a poor test, then we fail to reduce avoidable human suffering and risk of TB death. More worrying is that the infection keeps spreading," said Prevent-Find-Treat ALL TB campaign leader Shobha Shukla. "There is no excuse for inaction since WHO recommended portable molecular tests are available since 2010. We must eliminate deadly delays between scientific breakthroughs and the time by when they translate into public health impact."
As per the latest WHO Global TB Report 2025, almost half (46%) of the TB patients in 2024 worldwide received a poor test - microscopy. Microscopy misses finding TB accurately in half (or more) of those who take this test. It is being used since last 144 years ago when Dr Koch made this TB scientific breakthrough. But in the last two decades, science has gifted us some highly sensitive and specific portable molecular tests to find TB early and accurately - and quite a few of these are WHO recommended.
That is why the highest-level leadership of the UN health agency - World Health Organization (WHO)- had called upon the governments (Find.Treat.All) in 2018 to completely replace microscopy with upfront WHO recommended molecular tests by 2027.
Prior to this, Government of India's National TB Elimination Programme had released its National TB Elimination Strategy 2017-2025 under the visionary leadership of the then-head (Deputy Director General) Dr Kuldeep Singh Sachdeva. This strategy had also set forth an ambitious time plan to radically scale up upfront molecular TB testing in India during 2017-2025. Indian government programme has surpassed several of the indicators enlisted in that strategy.
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