Médecins Sans Frontières - INT_Why do so many children still die from TB?

Unique Identifier Code / URN MSB188494

Date taken / Date Recorded 05/03/2024 12:00 AM

Country France

Commissioning section MSF-FRANCE

Copyright MSF

Usage Rights (MSF) External Media, MSF Fundraising, MSF Publications, Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available yes

Editor's rating ★★★ (F)

Video format h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 2m42s

Maximum Size 1080px × 1920px 384.14 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist Cathy Hewison
TB referent at MSF

Tuberculosis, or TB as we call it, really affects children. There's 10 million cases of TB per year, and over 1 million of them are in children. But what's worse, 60% of the cases of TB in children are never diagnosed.
200,000 children die from TB each year, and 96% of them were never put on treatment. That means that every three minutes, one child dies from TB.
Children are very vulnerable to tuberculosis. Their immune systems are not as well developed as in adults, which means that they are more likely to be infected by TB but also they are more likely to get severe forms of the disease.
Why do so many children go undiagnosed with tuberculosis? The reasons are multifactorial. Firstly, clinicians are reluctant to start a long tuberculosis treatment without a test that proves that they have tuberculosis. Unfortunately, because children get sick with very few bacteria, it means that most tests that we have are negative in children.
In addition, most tests that we have that were developed to test adults require a specimen such as sputum, and it's difficult for children to cough up sputum.
This means that frequently the diagnosis is delayed, and because children get severe forms of TB and rapidly develop disease, these delays can be fatal.
TB treatment works in children and we have preventative treatment. So what can we do to increase the number of children diagnosed and put on correct treatment? Good news is: the World Health Organization has come out with some new recommendations. One of these is treatment decision algorithms.
These algorithms will help clinicians put children on treatment quickly on the basis of clinical symptoms. At MSF, we're seizing this opportunity. We are rolling out an innovative and unprecedented project called TACTiC, Test, Avoid, Cure TB in Children.
This multi-country project will support MSF teams and their partners on the ground to implement these new recommendations. In addition, we'll be doing operational research and advocacy to see this rollout happen all over the world.
TB is a preventable and curable disease.
Concretely, with TACTiC, we will see more children put on treatment and less children dying from tuberculosis.