Yesterday was World TB Day. Tuberculosis is a healthcare issue, of course, but it is also one relevant with regards to institutional care. First of all, as long as TB still goes around, it spreads like wildfire in places where children live close together, for example in so-called orphanages.
Secondly, TB is particularly associated with people, including children, who are infected with HIV/AIDS. Due to their weakened immune system, these children are more likely to catch and get ill with TB, and to die from it. And due to the serious stigma attached to HIV/AIDS in many places in the world, children who have HIV may be more likely to be abandoned and end up in an institution.
I have encountered numerous cases of TB in children with HIV living in institutions. Part of my work has been to raise awareness about this and educate people running the institutions on the risk on this and on more effective ways of screening for it.
Still, in many places doctors only use sputum tests when they are looking for TB. This is very useful to discover active pulmonary TB, but will not find active TB of other systems in the body, or dormant TB. So, in the places where I have been involved, I have advocated for the use of Mantoux tests, which will indicate the presence of any kind of TB, whether dormant or active. This allows for the TB to be treated before the person carrying it gets ill (and contagious).
TB can still kill. Especially with increasing resistance being built against the medication available for it. And since children living in institutions generally already have weaker immune systems because of inadequate care, as well as usually not having access to the top of the line medication when they get the disease, they are particularly vulnerable to TB.
So we must continue to spread awareness about the dangers of the disease, effective ways to test and treat early and the importance of completing the full course of treatment correctly to prevent creating new resistant strains of TB.
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