34 kids found with TB

MBABANE – Around 34 cases of tuberculosis (TB) in children were identified in one day.

In an effort to reduce the number of children who pass away due to late or undetected cases of TB in the country, the national TB programme under the Ministry of Health embarked on an exercise to visit all communities in the country to conduct TB screening in vulnerable groups.

The programme has visited around 10 communities to date across the country, where they offered TB prevention programmes. In most of the communities, the programme involved educating people about TB and further sensitising them about the early signs of the disease.

In 2011, the Government of Eswatini officially declared TB a national emergency.

Since the state of emergency was declared, Eswatini saw an 80 per cent reduction in new TB infections between 2011 and 2020 and TB-related deaths also plummeted by about 75 per cent during that time. While these successes highlighted tremendous progress, gaps and challenges were identified, more especially in children.

An estimated 10 to 12 per cent of TB cases in Eswatini are of children. In 2021, children only accounted for 5.2 per cent of notified TB patients.

Undetected

The advent of COVID-19 interrupted some of the interventions of the national TB programme, thus a lot of cases were left undetected.

This past weekend, the National TB Control Programme conducted its outreach programme at Somntongo Constituency. National TB Community Services Coordinator Joyce Sibanda said they screened 550 children at Somntongo and found that 34 of them had symptoms of TB.

“The 34 children were referred to local health facilities for further examination and treatment,” she said.

She highlighted that they visited around 10 communities, where they were sensitising the residents about TB. She stated that over time, they included screening as part of their routine. Sibanda said they noted that there was a lot of undetected TB among children.

She said the 34 cases at Somntongo alone showed that there were a lot of children with TB who were at risk in the country as they were also likely to infect the people around them. She stated that the detection rate in the country was sitting at 49 per cent.

The coordinator said through the outreach programme, they aimed at screening 40 000 children in all four regions of the country, making it 10 per region.

In 2015, 239 000 children younger than 15 years died from tuberculosis. Of these deaths, 132 000 were younger than five years. Around 40 000 of the deaths were children with HIV, 31 000 were from the African continent. More than 230 000 of the tuberculosis deaths occurred in children not receiving TB treatment.

Worth noting, on February 10, 2023, a TB Gaps study was launched in Eswatini, at the Mountain View Hotel in Mbabane.

The study will prioritise three areas which are: Screening and comparison; prevention of TB by giving preventative medication; as well as follow-up on those on treatment. It was funded by the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) and would be implemented by Baylor Medical College in the next three years.