TUBERCULOSIS: South Africa -- Tuberculosis in Children Neglected

DURBAN, South Africa, Jun 3 (IPS) - Even though tuberculosis (TB) is a major cause for illness and mortality in children, South Africa lacks the political will to tackle the disease, health experts say.And the country’s health system is not up to scratch to diagnose and treat children who have contracted the bacteria. "TB in children is neglected, and we need to urgently redress this," said Health Systems Trust senior researcher Dr. Tsholofelo Mhlaba at the 2nd TB Conference, held in Durban from Jun. 1-4. "To do this, we would basically need an overhaul of the health system and allocate major finances for childhood TB programmes." About nine million people get infected with TB each year, a third of them live in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation. Up to 15 percent, or 450,000, are African children. There are no detailed statistics available for the number of paediatric TB cases in many African countries, including South Africa. This makes it extremely difficult to develop effective health programmes to control the epidemic, experts say. "Until we know how many children are infected and where, we won’t be able to appropriately intervene," cautioned Mhlaba. "We need much more research in South Africa and better reporting and recording systems."
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