Though India has made substantial progress in containing tuberculosis (TB), its huge population poses a challenge in efforts to check the spread of the disease, a top World Health Organisation (WHO) official said on Sunday.

"India has made large, large progress. That is for sure.

And that is not only for TB, in other health areas as well.

Because population of India is large, so Indian improvement is directly linked to global improvement," said Hiroki Nakatani, WHO assistant director general (HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases).

"Second, (where) tuberculosis is concerned, progress has been made. It is true. But, population is large, India is presenting itself as global burden (in terms of number of TB cases). The Indian government has been addressing the challenge," he said.

Nakatani was speaking to reporters after the inauguration of the World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences 2011 by president Pratibha Patil here.

Mukund Uplekar, who works with the Stop Tuberculosis department of the WHO, said though two million new cases of TB are reported in the country every year, the National TB Programme has been a good success.