The high population density of Colombo City has been a principal factor in the spread of tuberculosis there over a period of years, Health Minister Dr Nalinda Jayatissa told Parliament on Friday.
He was answering an oral question from MP Mujibur Rahman, the Daily Mirror reported. Hiru News carried the same exchange, and the two accounts agree on every figure.
Seven years of case counts
The minister gave Colombo City’s reported tuberculosis cases year by year:
| Year | Reported cases |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 871 |
| 2020 | 736 |
| 2021 | 796 |
| 2022 | 1,093 |
| 2023 | 1,130 |
| 2024 | 1,064 |
| 2025 | 968 |
The series has a clear shape. Cases fell to their lowest point in 2020, rose through 2021 to a peak of 1,130 in 2023 — a 54 per cent increase on the 2020 figure — and have declined in each of the two years since. The 2025 count remains 11 per cent above the 2019 baseline.
Jayatissa said the spread had been aggravated by infected people failing to seek medical treatment, and noted the decline in reported cases in 2025.
What the minister did not address
The answer explains the 2022–23 rise only by reference to population density, which is a standing feature of Colombo rather than something that changed in those years. Neither filing reports the minister offering an account of why the numbers moved when they did, nor does either connect the 2020 trough to the pandemic period — a point that would bear on whether the fall reflects fewer infections or less detection, and whether the subsequent rise is a rebound in diagnosis rather than in disease.
No 2026 figure is given, although the year is nearly over. The counts are confined to Colombo City, so they are not a national picture, and neither account supplies a population denominator, which is what would be needed to turn the counts into a rate and test the density argument.
Nor does either filing report what the ministry proposes to do. No screening programme, treatment-adherence measure, budget or target is mentioned, and there is no indication of how many of the reported cases completed treatment. Rahman’s question is not reproduced in either account, and no response from him is recorded.