Tuberculosis is the second leading cause of death in Zimbabwe with children more vulnerable and lagging behind adults in terms of access to quality care and treatment, Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) has said.
Addressing journalists today during a Catalyzing Pediatric TB Media Sensitization Meeting, EGPAF Senior Technical Advisor, Tichaona Nyamundaya said diagnosing TB in children is difficult as they are less likely to have obvious symptoms.
“Children with TB there is a possibility of them being mis-diagnosed, the signs and symptoms of TB are quiet similar to other common childhood illnesses for example coughing so a child with TB might end up being treated for pneumonia,
“They could also be treated for malnutrition because children with TB do not grow but all the same TB in children is difficult to diagnose because splitums tend to have low numbers of the bacteria to be picked by the testing machine, secondly it is difficult to collect a splitum from a child and when children fall sick, receive health care services there limited integration of TB services where they get other health services,” said Nyamundaya.
According to the World Health Organization, Zimbabwe is among the top 30 countries in the world with a high burden of multi resistance drug TB.
Ministry of Health and Child (MoHCC) Care TB Technical Advisor, Dr Simbarashe Mashizha revealed that Zimbabwe has been struggling to meet the target for childhood TB detection cases which is 10-15%.
However MoHCC in partnership with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) and with funding from Unitaid will launch a project to accelerate diagnosis and treatment of TB in children.
EGPAF is the global leader in the fight against pediatric HIV/AIDS and has reached more than 27 million pregnant women with services to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies.
