The Philippines ranked third globally among countries with the highest burden of tuberculosis (TB), with an incidence rate of 500 new cases per 100,000 population in 2024, based on a new global report by the World Health Organization (WHO) released on Wednesday.
According to the WHO Global Tuberculosis report 2025, there were 10.7 million people globally who developed TB last year, of which 8.3 million were considered as newly diagnosed, with deaths reaching 1.23 million.
WHO said 67 percent of all TB cases in the world were recorded in just eight countries, considered as having the highest burden of the disease. Ranking first was India, which accounts for 25 percent of all TB cases worldwide, with second being Indonesia at 10 percent.
The Philippines ranked third, accounting for 6.8 percent of TB cases in the world, with the fourth being China (6.5 percent), followed by Pakistan (6.3 percent), Nigeria (4.8 percent), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.9 percent) and Bangladesh (3.6 percent).
‘TB is caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is spread when people who are sick with TB expel bacteria into the air (e.g. by coughing),’ said WHO.
‘Of the total number of people who develop TB disease each year, about 90 percent are adults, with more cases among men than women. The disease typically affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can affect other sites as well,’ it added.
When it comes to the TB incidence rate, WHO said that globally, there were 131 new cases per 100,000 population last year. In the Philippines, however, the TB incidence rate was much higher at 500 new cases per 100,000 population.
This placed the country under category 1, classified as ‘severely endemic,’ in the WHO report, alongside nations such as Lesotho, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea, which all had incidence rates equal to or higher than 500 new cases per 100,000 population.
These four countries accounted for 8.8 percent of worldwide TB cases, WHO noted.
According to WHO, the Philippines’ TB incidence rate in 2024 had risen by around 5 percent compared to the rate in 2015, with the same increase recorded in 36 other countries.
Without treatment, WHO said death from TB would be likely. However, it noted that 90 percent of people with TB can be cured with proper treatment, which includes the use of anti-TB drugs over the course of four to six months.
‘The number of people acquiring infection and developing the disease (and, in turn, the number of deaths caused by TB) can also be reduced through multisectoral action to address broader determinants of TB, such as poverty, undernutrition, HIV infection, smoking and diabetes,’ said WHO.
The report also found that the Philippines was among the 30 countries with a high burden of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)-associated TB. According to WHO, people with HIV are about 16 times more likely to develop TB, with the disease being the leading cause of death for those with HIV.
The Philippines was also included in the countries with the highest burden of multidrug resistant or rifampicin-resistant TB (MRR/RR-TB), accounting for 7.1 percent of the global number of people who have developed the condition, ranking just below India (32 percent) and China (7.1 percent).
People develop drug resistance when medicines for TB are used inappropriately, such as when health-care providers give incorrect prescriptions or patients stop their treatment prematurely, or due to poor quality drugs.
WHO also pointed out that there are ‘sizeable gaps’ when it comes to diagnosing TB, noting the difference between the estimated number of people who develop the disease each year and the number of people who were newly diagnosed and officially reported to have the disease.
It said that the ‘global gap’ between the estimated TB incidence and the reported number of people newly diagnosed with the disease last year was mostly due to 10 countries, including the Philippines, which account for 63 percent of the global gap.
The top five countries, representing 40 percent of the global gap, were Indonesia (at 10 percent), India (8.8 percent), the Philippines (7.5 percent), Pakistan (7.2 percent) and China (6.9 percent).
For WHO, these countries must pay particular importance to efforts in increasing levels of case detection and treatment for TB.
In a statement also on Wednesday, the Department of Health (DOH) said it is intensifying its TB elimination efforts, with plans to screen 12 million Filipinos by next year. The agency added that it has allocated P4.2 billion for its TB program in its proposed 2026 budget.
The DOH said it has also rolled out a shorter Tuberculosis Preventive Treatment regimen and case investigation, which has also been expanded to cover drug-resistant TB cases.
‘We are already using an innovative treatment for drug-resistant TB, that cuts the treatment from two years to only six months with a higher treatment success rate,’ Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said in a statement.