The COVID-19 pandemic must not divert attention
If resources are diverted away from child and adolescent tuberculosis (TB) programmes in order to fight COVID-19, the consequences for the estimated 400,000 children and adolescents in the African region needing TB and multidrug-resistant TB care each year could be devastating, warned the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) recently.
As the coronavirus pandemic makes its way into the African continent, there are concerns about its potential impact on the large number of children and adolescents living with TB infection or disease across the region. TB is both curable and preventable but remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children and adolescents and has only recently been afforded the attention that was long overdue.
An estimated one million children fall ill with TB every year, and one-quarter of all people with TB disease in the world live in Africa. In 2018, of all the people living with HIV in the world who developed TB, 72 percent of them were in Africa. And Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 82 percent of all HIV-associated TB deaths that same year.
Worldwide, 90 percent of children who die from TB do not receive the standard treatment that could save their lives. This oversight is due to various challenges in TB detection in children and because standard diagnostic tools are less effective. TB is an often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed cause or co-morbidity of common childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, malnutrition and meningitis. Adolescents with TB are also neglected, despite being identified as a high-risk age group for developing highly infectious TB, and having age-specific challenges to accessing diagnosis and care.
The Union is calling on donors and partners to continue to support TB care and prevention responses – including a focused effort on child and adolescent TB. The Union is also calling on national TB programmes and ministries of health to keep TB and comorbidities on the agenda during the COVID-19 response.
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