Roadmap to prevent childhood TB released

Thousands of deaths from childhood tuberculosis could be prevented with $80 million per year, according to a press release.

More than 200 children younger than 15 years die of TB every day. An estimated 6% to 10% of all TB cases are among children, according to WHO.

“Any child that dies from TB is one child too many,” said Mario Raviglione, MD, director of the Global Tuberculosis Programme at WHO. “As we know, TB is preventable and treatable; this roadmap shifts our focus from the challenges we face to immediate actions we take.”

The report, “Roadmap for Childhood Tuberculosis: Towards Zero Deaths,” was published today and lists steps that must be taken by governments, donors, researchers and the health and development communities.

Improving detection, developing better medicines for children and integrating TB treatment into existing maternal and childhood health programs could be completed with $80 million per year of new funding from donors and governments. An additional $40 million per year would provide ART and preventive therapy for children coinfected with TB and HIV.

The roadmap recommends 10 actions be taken at national and global levels, including:

Adding the needs of children and adolescents in research, policy development and clinical practices;
Collecting and reporting better data;
Developing training and reference materials for health care workers on childhood TB;
Fostering expertise and leadership among child-health workers at all levels of the system;
Using critical intervention strategies and ensuring there is an adequate supply of high-quality anti-TB medicines for children;
Engaging stakeholders and establishing communication and collaboration between health care sections and other sectors that address social determinants of health and access to care;
Implement family- and community-centered strategies to provide services at the community level;
Address research gaps and gap in operational research and research looking at health systems and services;
Closing all funding gaps for childhood TB; and
Forming coalitions and partnerships to discover the best strategies for managing and preventing childhood TB.

“TB ‘hides’ in children,” said Lucica Ditiu, MD, executive secretary of the Stop TB Partnership. “Malnutrition and diseases such as HIV/AIDS and pneumonia share common TB symptoms, such as fever, cough or weight loss, making this hidden killer hard to identify. What we have found, however, is a set of solutions that costs very little compared to the scale of the problem.”