Approximately six million people in India's Delhi territory at risk of contracting tuberculosis

About six million people in the Indian territory of Delhi, or 40% of the territory's population of 15 million, are at risk of contracting tuberculosis, L.S. Chauhan, deputy director general of India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said recently ahead of the International Union Against TB and Lung Disease's Conference of the South East Asia Region, which begins Monday in New Delhi, IANS/Economic Times reports. The three-day conference will bring together about 500 experts from South Asia and France to discuss the threat of TB and other lung diseases.

Chauhan noted that although there are not six million active TB cases in Delhi, many people at risk of TB could develop the disease if they do not "take precautions." V.K. Arora, vice chair of the TB Association of India, said that the majority of people with TB in India are "migrant laborers, slum dwellers, residents of crowded localities and pockets of urban slums." Arora added that "[p]oor living conditions and malnutrition" contribute to the spread of the disease.

Almost 50,000 new TB patients in Delhi began receiving TB treatment last year, 13,695 of whom had sputum-infectious TB, IANS/Economic Times reports. India's Revised National TB Control Program is progressing in its efforts to curb TB in Delhi, with 354,116 patients receiving DOTS since 1997, Chauhan said. According to the health ministry, DOTS implementation has prevented more than 62,000 deaths from TB in Delhi, and the TB death rate has been consistently lower than 2.5% in the territory. Delhi has nearly 580 DOTS centers and 188 TB diagnostic facilities and is one of three Indian states to introduce a DOTS strategy to address drug-resistant TB. According to IANS/Economic Times, TB cases in India account for at least 20% of the global TB burden (IANS/Economic Times, 9/7).