IJCM₂86A: Will India able to bend the curve? TB Elimination in India by 2025

Background: Tuberculosis in India is a major public health problem. The National Strategic Plan 2017-2025 aims to achieve a rapid decline in burden of TB, morbidity and mortality while working towards elimination of TB in India by 2025. By proper care and treatment of TB patients, the battle against TB can be won. In the current scenario, forecasting of Tuberculosis incidence and annual case notification rate could help policy makers in planning an effective intervention at the right time keeping in mind the target for TB elimination. Objectives: 1) To study the trend of Tuberculosis in India. 2) To forecast the incidence and annual case notification rate due to Tuberculosis in India for next 3 years. Methodology: Data regarding the incidence and annual case notification rate were collected from the annual reports of Tuberculosis published by Central TB Division, Government of India. Data from the sources were collected in a data extraction sheet and entered in MS excel. Gretl software was used for data analysis. Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) method was used to select the best fitted model for available time series data and using the selected model incidence and annual case notification rate were forecasted for next 3 years. Results: The study showed an upward trend in incidence and annual case notification rate in the sampling and post sampling period. According to the forecast, for the year 2025 the incidence of Tuberculosis will be 28.36 lakhs (95%CI- 26.4886, 32.8556) and annual case notification rate will be 178 (95%CI- 144, 211). Conclusion: There is an upward trend of Tuberculosis incidence and annual case notification rate in India in forecasted period. To achieve the set targets, the policy makers need to plan and implement more effective interventions at the right time.