India Infectious Disease Trends: Fewer Deaths, New Outbreaks

Female community health workers in India
File photo: female community health workers in India. Photo: CDC Global via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
TB, malaria fallingUpdated 18 October 2026

Trend summary

  • Tuberculosis is falling, but slowly. WHO estimates India’s TB incidence at 187 per 100,000 people in 2024, down 21% from 237 in 2015. India still diagnosed 2.62 million (26.18 lakh) people with TB in 2024.
  • Malaria has dropped sharply. Recorded cases fell from 1.17 million in 2015 to 255,500 in 2024, and deaths from 384 to 86.
  • Dengue swings from year to year. Official counts show 289,235 cases in 2023, 233,519 in 2024 and 121,824 in 2025. Deaths are low, but the counts only cover reported cases.
  • Spillover viruses keep coming back. Kerala has had nine Nipah outbreaks since 2018, and West Bengal confirmed two cases in January 2026. Drug resistance is now a national plan of its own (NAP-AMR 2.0, 2025–29).
187TB cases per 100,000 people, 2024 (237 in 2015)
255,500malaria cases recorded, 2024 (1.17 million in 2015)
121,824dengue cases recorded, 2025 (289,235 in 2023)
9Nipah outbreaks in Kerala, 2018 to mid-2025

What the numbers show

Tuberculosis is still India’s biggest infectious killer. According to the WHO Global TB Report 2025, as summarised by the Health Ministry, TB incidence fell from 237 to 187 per 100,000 people between 2015 and 2024, a 21% drop against 12% globally. TB deaths fell from 28 to 21 per 100,000. India diagnosed 2.62 million (26.18 lakh) people in 2024 out of an estimated 2.7 million, and the estimated number of “missing” cases fell from about 1.5 million in 2015 to under 100,000 (source). That is well short of the national goal of an 80% cut in incidence by 2025 compared with 2015 (PIB).

Mosquito-borne disease tells two stories. Malaria fell from 1,169,261 cases and 384 deaths in 2015 (NCVBDC) to 255,500 cases and 86 deaths in 2024, and 233,917 cases and 76 deaths in 2025 (NCVBDC). Dengue has not followed that path: the national programme recorded 193,245 cases in 2021, 289,235 in 2023, 233,519 in 2024 and 121,824 in 2025, with 131 deaths last year (NCVBDC).

Respiratory viruses come in waves. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic brought 27,236 confirmed cases and 981 deaths in India that year, then 20,604 cases and 1,763 deaths in 2010; a fresh surge in early 2015 recorded 14,673 cases and 841 deaths in under eight weeks (source). India passed 2 billion (200 crore) COVID-19 vaccine doses on 17 July 2022, 18 months after the drive began on 16 January 2021 (source).

What is driving it

Much of the recent TB effort goes into finding cases earlier. Since a 100-day screening campaign began on 7 December 2024, over 200 million (20 crore) people have been screened and over 2.8 million (28 lakh) TB patients diagnosed, about 900,000 of them with no symptoms (source). Patients also get ₹1,000 a month for food, and over 15,000 people with drug-resistant TB have started the shorter BPaLM regimen. For malaria, 160 districts reported zero cases in 2022–24, and testing for dengue now runs through 869 sentinel hospitals, up from 110 in 2007 (source, source).

The risks that remain are harder to control. Nipah spills over from fruit bats, and most of Kerala’s outbreaks have been in Kozhikode and Malappuram districts (WHO). Measles returned in 2022, with 3,075 infections and 13 deaths in Maharashtra by 12 December (PIB). Antibiotic misuse drives resistance; Kerala and Gujarat were the first states to ban over-the-counter antibiotic sales, and the second national AMR plan was launched in November 2025 (source).

Recent cases

  • 13 October 2026: A government update put cumulative TB screening at over 281 million (28.1 crore) people and said 46,118 village councils had been certified TB-free; treatment coverage stood at 92% (PIB).
  • 25 August 2026: The Health Ministry said it was tracking seasonal influenza through 73 virus labs, with an H1N1 lineage (subclade D.3.1.1) circulating in India since 2025 (PIB).
  • 25 June 2026: WHO reported one confirmed Nipah case in Kozhikode, Kerala, confirmed on 11 June; 104 contacts were being monitored and no further cases had been found (WHO).

Press releases and official reports, 2023–2026

Five key releases a year for the last four years, newest first. Most come from Government of India ministries through the Press Information Bureau (PIB), national agencies such as NCRB, the Reserve Bank of India and the National Center for Seismology, and state governments; a few news reports and data analyses are included where they are the clearest public record of an event. Releases from 2007–2022 are in the expandable list after 2023.

2026

2025

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2023

View 20 years of major Indian infectious disease press releases (2007–2026)26 more from 2007–2022, up to five a year, newest first

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2021

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2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2012

2010

Many years list fewer than five items, and some have none yet. Older Government of India releases are hard to find at their original addresses, and we only list items we could open and check. We are still adding to these lists. Where a page shows no date, the date comes from the release address or the publisher’s own index.

Photo list

Close-up of an Aedes aegypti mosquito
File photo: an Aedes aegypti mosquito, the main carrier of dengue. Photo: US Army Medicine via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Jadurhati Primary Health Centre, North 24 Parganas
File photo: Jadurhati Primary Health Centre, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal. Photo: Biswarup Ganguly via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

Related on ROR Labs

How this page is built. Figures come from the official statistical releases linked above; where agencies publish provisional numbers we say so, because they are revised. Many Indian statistics are compiled state by state and published a year or two late (NCRB’s accident report for 2024 came out in 2026), so we say which year each figure covers. Large numbers are written in international form, with lakh (100,000) and crore (10 million) in brackets where Indian sources use them. Photos are public-domain or Creative Commons images credited in each caption; file photos are illustrative and are not from the events described unless the caption says so. This page tracks trends and is not personal safety, medical, legal or financial advice.