New Delhi (AFP)

The symptoms were there yet. But it took Bharti Kapar to go through four doctors, months of medical wandering and several weeks of bed rest, before finally diagnosed the disease behind his tough cough and stomach pain: tuberculosis.

This young woman from a poor peripheral city of New Delhi is one of 2.7 million new estimated cases of tuberculosis each year in India. With more than a quarter of the world's cases, the giant of South Asia is the most affected nation on the planet by this disease that has accompanied humanity for millennia. However, he has vowed to overcome it in the coming years.

Declared cured in April after five months of rigorous treatment, to swallow without fail several pills a day, Bharti Kapar remains exhausted by the ordeal. She must force herself to venture out of the narrow family home that she shares with her mother, her two brothers and a sister-in-law.

"Sometimes I feel that my breathing is difficult, it's not normal, I do not have any energy, I do not want to go out, I do not want to do anything," says the woman at home. 24 years.

While France hosts the triennial fundraising of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Lyon on Wednesday and Thursday, the Indian government has set the year 2025 as a horizon to put an end to the Tuberculosis epidemic in the country of 1.3 billion people. An ambitious goal, probably too much.

- 2,100 aircraft crashes -

Yet this war effort "is not just rhetoric, it is taking concrete shape, for example, the budget for TB in India has doubled between 2016 and 2018," said Dr Jamhoih Tonsing, Director. South-East Asia Office of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Creation of a national database, bringing together public and private health sectors, door-to-door programs, patient monitoring systems, pilot projects using artificial intelligence ... Health authorities and independent organizations have sounded the general mobilization, turning India into the main front line against tuberculosis.

But if the experts welcome the progress made against this infection, which is transmitted by air via droplets of saliva when a contaminated person speaks or cough, the deadline set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems untenable.

The incidence of TB in India is currently decreasing by about 2% every year, but to reach the 2025 target, we would need it to fall by at least 10% a year, "notes Dr. Jamhoih Tonsing.

Major scourge in Western countries until the middle of the twentieth century, tuberculosis has become residual thanks to the progress of medicine and the improvement of the living conditions of the populations. It is prevalent today especially in developing countries.

In 2017, 421,000 Indians succumbed to tuberculosis, the equivalent of ... 2,100 Boeing 737 MAX plane crashes, according to a comparison of the IndiaSpend website.

- "Disease of the poor man" -

Beyond the health crisis, this disease also has a heavy economic cost for society.

His bacterium mainly attacks men between 24 and 58 years, the main labor force in India, and modest backgrounds. A set of factors (malnutrition, overpopulation, migrations, smoking ...) helps to reduce the immune defenses of the latter and makes them more vulnerable.

"Tuberculosis remains primarily a poor man's disease, and investing in it (to fight it) will probably support the economy, reduce poverty, and improve the overall health of the home," says Shibu Vijayan, a senior health officer. Tuberculosis of the NGO PATH.

In a poor neighborhood with congested streets south of New Delhi, TB patients come to take their daily dose of medicine in a tiny clinic. Some visitors wear a mask or scarf tied in front of their mouth to avoid contaminating others.

A digital tablet displays the names and phone numbers of patients who need to come in that day to ingest their medications, ensuring that they are scrupulously following their treatment.

Poorly administered anti-tuberculosis drugs, or treatments interrupted before their term, are responsible for the spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is following with concern this form of tuberculosis resistant to traditional medicines, with a mortality rate of 50% comparable to that of Ebola, likely to call into question the progress made in recent decades.

With multidrug-resistant TB, estimated at around 600,000 cases worldwide, including 135,000 in India, "we created a monster," says Sandeep Ahuja, co-founder of the NGO Operation ASHA. "Now you have to control it, the numbers are still manageable."

© 2019 AFP