Four out of 10 children have TB, only two being treated
By George.Kebaso, July 28, 2023Four out 10 children are being diagnosed for Tuberculosis, and only half of those identified as sick from the condition, are initiated into treatments, it has emerged.
In the same breath, only 40 percent, about 7.4 million are put on preventive therapies to protect them from being infected by TB.
This has led to children health experts concluding that minors have been left behind in the TB prevention and elimination goals, not in Kenya alone, but across the African continent.
According to Dr Eliud Mwangi, Country director, Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) Kenya, there is low uptake of new technologies to diagnose paediatric Tuberculosis.
“We end up losing many children who otherwise would have been diagnosed and treated, since once one is diagnosed treatment can be initiated,” he said yesterday at the Global TB caucus forum in Nairobi ahead of the September 2023 UN High-Level Meeting on TB in New York.
He attributed this to the low uptake of new technologies in most parts of the country to diagnose paediatric TB with the traditional methods of paediatric diagnosis proving unreliable. This is also because it is hard to get sputum samples from them.
Approximately 96 percent of paediatrics who die of TB do not have access to diagnosis therefore hindering treatment initiations despite the fact that TB is treatable.
Dr. Mwangi pointed out that there has been a roll out and adoption of new treatment regimens for TB and timely adoption of World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations on prevention, treatment and diagnostics in Kenya.
“However, the only area that requires a lot of effort is paediatric TB because globally it is estimated that about 1.2million children had TB in 2021 and only 44 percent were diagnosed, meaning we are only diagnosing 4 out of 10 children with TB,” he said. The MPs who come from across the continent, health, policy and other experts are expected to come up with a Nairobi position on the disease this afternoon.
At the 2018 UN High-Level Meeting (HLM) on TB, world leaders committed to hold a ‘comprehensive review by Heads of State and Government at a high-level meeting in 2023’ in the Political Declaration on TB agreed at the meeting.
The 2023 UN HLM on TB will place the declaration before the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week on September 22, 2023.