Maharashtra detected 6,111 new TB cases during the first 35 days of the Centre’s 100-day TB-Free India campaign, while 11,091 villages in the state were identified as high-risk through an artificial intelligence-based assessment system, a minister informed the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
In a written reply, Public Health Minister Prakash Apitkar acknowledged that villages in Nagpur (482), Yavatmal (539), Amravati (504), Nashik (488) and Raigad (488) were among those villages identified by the Centre’s AI-based system as high-risk under the ‘100 Day TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan’.
However, he said it was not true that the prevalence of tuberculosis was unusually high in Vidarbha’s cotton growing belt or tribal-dominated areas compared to other parts of the state.
“Under the National TB Elimination Programme, risk-based screening, active case detection and registration on the Nikshay portal are being conducted regularly in all districts. No specific geographical area has been found to have an abnormally high burden of TB,” the minister said.
Giving district-level details, he said Latur district recorded 729 new TB patients between January and April 2026 and currently has 1,020 patients undergoing treatment.
In Ahilyanagar district, 4,493 new TB cases and 92 deaths were reported during 2025. Between January and May 2026, 1,846 new TB patients and 10 deaths were reported, the response said.
Abitkar also rejected claims that diagnosis and treatment have been delayed due to the lack of AI-enabled diagnostic equipment or CB-NAAT devices.
Maharashtra currently has 117 AI-based portable X-ray machines, 171 CB-NAAT machines and 746 TrueNAAT machines, taking the total number of advanced TB diagnostic machines in the state to 917, the minister said.
