NEW DELHI: India must stop its doctors prescribing “irrational” treatments to cure tuberculosis, medical humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres said Saturday, warning the practice is increasing drug-resistant strains of the disease.

India is already home to the highest number of tuberculosis (TB) sufferers globally with two million cases every year and drug-resistant strains are on the rise, Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF said in a statement ahead of World TB day on Monday.

TB patients in India face a potentially “grave risk of developing drug-resistant TB due to irrational prescribing practices,” MSF said.

While huge strides have been made in controlling TB worldwide, the emergence of deadly strains that cannot be cured with existing medicines has turned the illness into one of the globe’s most urgent health concerns.

India’s government has already said it seeking to tackle deepening TB drug resistance with a wide-ranging national diagnostic and treatment program for the communicable, airborne disease that usually attacks the lungs.

But MSF urged health authorities to go farther and implement a “standardised first-line daily tuberculosis treatment regimen” in the public and private health sectors. With public health care services overstretched, many TB patients turn to private doctors who have “never been trained to use TB drugs in a proper way,” Leena Menghaney, India coordinator of MSF’s Access Campaign, told AFP.