According to the World Health Organization, at least a million children are infected with Tuberculosis (TB) yearly. And every year, about 140,000 of them die from the disease; that is nearly 400 children per day.
Treating TB in children has proved challenging for a number of reasons: there are non-specific symptoms and a lack of child-friendly diagnostic test, therefore the illness is often overlooked. There is a general lack of knowledge and community engagement when it comes to childhood TB. There is also a lack of sufficient knowledge amongst health workers on the prevention, diagnosis and management of the disease in children.
To tackle these challenges and reduce mortality, several international health organisations and agencies have come together to develop a TB treatment specifically for children which will be rolled out for the first time in Kenya next week. As one of the countries with a high burden of TB, it makes sense that Kenya will be the first to roll out the drug in a national health program since the approval of the formulation last November.
According to Mario Raviglione, director of the global TB program at WHO, Kenya has been extremely eager to begin roll-out, and its well-established and relatively decentralised network of TB clinics made things easier.
As reported by Devex, the drug’s adoption in Kenya and several other countries in coming years will bridge a huge gap in TB treatment, one that has often led to incorrect dosages and fuelled drug-resistant strains of the disease in children. After Kenya, Uganda, the Philippines, and India are next in line for the launch of a national program on child-friendly TB treatment, which Raviglione said would give the majority of children with TB access to the correct formulation worldwide.
As part of the new programme, TB-focused organisations will also be joining forces with those working on maternal and child health and education. “National TB programs deliver [medicines] through program clinics,” Raviglione said, explaining that TB symptoms can be tough to detect in young children, and often the facilities that offer health services to mothers and children are separate from those with staff trained to detect TB. So that when mothers bring their children to these paediatrics-focused clinics, TB symptoms were often missed.
Also, the director of paediatric programs at TB Alliance, Dr. Cherise Scott, told Devex that the goal to get the treatment programme up and running brought new players on board in the fight against the disease. “Because of this we’ve committed new players to the fight against TB, organisations like Save the Children and UNICEF, people we wouldn’t have reached if we were focusing on TB broadly,” she said.
The child-friendly treatment program comes through a partnership between WHO, Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, and UNITAID. It will be implemented by the Kenyan government, and other partners, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. So far, over 17 other governments have placed orders for the drug, while several others plan to implement national programs.
