Current perspectives on global childhood tuberculosis
12:30-1:30pm AEST Thursday 7 April 2022
Register and add to your calendar
Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global health priority as a major cause of child and adolescent morbidity and mortality. In 2020, an estimated 1.1 million children developed TB. Significant progress has been made to advance child TB care since the priority given by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Stop TB strategy in 2006. However, ongoing challenges remain, which include the under-detection; poor implementation of contact investigation and TB preventive treatment services; the need for health systems to deliver integrated and decentralized services; and the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO will launch consolidated guidelines for children and adolescents with TB on World TB Day (March 24, 2022), that include new recommendations and an accompanying Operational Handbook.
This forum will explore clinical challenges in child TB diagnosis, implementation challenges in contact screening and management and provide a global policy update on Child TB
A clinical challenge: TB and pneumonia
Dr Saniya Kazi is a paediatrician who works with Monash Health and Dandenong Refugee Health and Wellbeing Services. As the first TB Fellow appointed on campus, she provided clinical care at RCH TB clinic and supported the Victorian TB Program to introduce improved treatments for disease and infection in young children. Saniya also led two of the recent reviews of child pneumonia for the WHO that were undertaken by Melbourne Children’s Global Health: one on the role of chest imaging and one on TB and child pneumonia.
A health services challenge: contact screening and management in a TB endemic setting
Dr Trisasi Lestari is a TB researcher at the Center for Tropical Medicine at the University of Gadjah Mada, Indonesia, and coordinator for Innovation and Development department of the Indonesian TB Researchers Network. Sasi is currently a PhD candidate at Menzies School of Health Research at Charles Darwin University, conducting research in Timika in the Papua province of Indonesia. She has contributed to collaborative training and research activities between Menzies and Burnet Institute such as the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security’s PRIME-TB and STRATUM projects, .
A policy update: WHO consolidated guidelines on child and adolescent TB
Professor Steve Graham has supported the WHO Global TB Programme as a founding member of the Child TB Working Group since 2003. This support has included WHO child TB guidelines development in 2006 and 2014. More recently, he co-Chaired the Guidelines Development Group for the updated and consolidated guidelines on child and adolescent TB that were launched this year on World TB Day.
Chair: Associate Professor Suman Majumdar
Register and add to your calendar: https://unimelb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xCpQ9pkbSE2TyrLNc5aegA