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Addressing the Data Gaps on Child and Adolescent Tuberculosis
Sabine Verkuijl1, Moorine Penninah Sekadde2, Peter J Dodd3
1Global Tuberculosis Programme, World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
Insights
Pediatric tuberculosis (TB) affects 1.1 million children, but only 400,000 receive treatment, highlighting a critical care gap. Improving data collection and estimates is vital to address this global health challenge in children and adolescents.
Area of Science:
- Global Health
- Epidemiology
- Pediatric Infectious Diseases
Background:
- Tuberculosis (TB) poses a significant burden on children and young adolescents (<15 years), with an estimated 1.1 million cases globally.
- A substantial treatment gap exists, with only 400,000 children and adolescents receiving TB treatment, underscoring the need for improved interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review recent advancements in data collection and burden estimation for pediatric and adolescent TB.
- To identify persistent data gaps at global and national levels crucial for guiding public health actions.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of current data collection efforts and estimation methodologies for TB in young populations.
- Review of global TB notifications, focusing on age-disaggregation, TB-HIV, multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), and treatment outcomes.
Main Results:
- Despite improvements, significant data gaps persist in pediatric TB surveillance and research, particularly for TB meningitis and other forms of extrapulmonary TB.
- Global efforts are increasingly focusing on age-specific TB data, including co-infections and drug resistance, to refine burden estimates.
Conclusions:
- Enhanced, frequent, and methodologically advanced burden estimates are essential to parallel improvements in data collection for child and adolescent TB.
- Addressing remaining data gaps through strengthened national surveillance and collaborative research is critical to reduce TB morbidity and mortality in these vulnerable age groups.
Abstract:
The burden of tuberculosis (TB) among children and young adolescents (<15 years old) is estimated at 1.1 million; however, only 400,000 are treated for TB, indicating a large gap between the number who are cared for and the number estimated to have TB. Accurate data on the burden of pediatric TB is essential to guide action. Despite several improvements in estimating the burden of pediatric TB in the last decade, as well as enhanced data collection efforts, several data gaps remain, both at the global level, but also at the national level where surveillance systems and collaborative research are critical. In this article, we describe recent advances in data collection and burden estimates for TB among children and adolescents, and the remaining gaps. While data collection continues to improve, burden estimates must evolve in parallel, both in terms of their frequency and the methods used. Currently, at the global level, there is a focus on age-disaggregation of TB notifications, the collection of data on TB-HIV, multi-drug resistant (MDR)-TB and treatment outcomes, as well as estimates of the disease burden. Additional data from national surveillance systems or research projects on TB meningitis, as well as other forms of extra-pulmonary TB, would be useful. We must capitalize on the current momentum in child and adolescent TB to close the remaining data gaps for these age groups to better understand the epidemic and further reduce morbidity and mortality due to TB.
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