According to a report published in Nepali Times almost half of the over 25 million population are infected with TB, leading some doctors to call this Nepal's 'national disease'. Infected people carry the bacilllus, but don't have the symptoms. However, they can pass it on to other people.
Of these, up to 90,000 people have active TB and there are 44000 new cases of the disease every year. But Nepal is also one of the success stories in using DOTS to reduce TB nortality. The number of people dying from TB has plummeted from 18,000 in 1994 to 11,000 today.
But multi-drug resistance is also growing. In 1999-2002, based on 755 patients with no history of previous treatment resistance was 5.4 percent for isoniazid, 8.9 percent to streptomycin and multi-drug resistance TB was 1.9 percent. These figures are estimated to have gone up in recent years.