Our work in child & adolescent TB
The Union works to develop, test, implement and scale up routine screening of child contacts of people with TB. We run observational studies and advocate to ensure children and adolescents are included in clinical trials that target diagnostics, vaccines and treatment of TB disease and infection.
The Union’s Child and Adolescent Tuberculosis Centre of Excellence is a virtual network of tuberculosis (TB) professionals and organisations in the sub-Sahara Africa region, providing a community of learning and practice for childhood and adolescent TB. It currently covers Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Eswatini, Zimbabwe.
Other areas of our work in tuberculosis
You might also be interested in our work on drug-resistant TB and TB-HIV, TB-diabetes and co-morbidities.
Two Union-led projects, in Uganda and four french-speaking countries, successfully developed influential models which saw local health workers trained to identify and treat children with TB as well as identifying those who would benefit from TB preventative therapy.
Part of The Union membership TB section, the maternal and child TB working group has provided technical support to countries considering potential safety of intermittent preventive therapy in pregnancy. As advocates, they collected stories from women around the world affected by TB in pregnancy, developed posters for the UNHLM for UNICEF and a briefing document, ‘The Dangers of TB in Pregnancy.’ These resources are available on The Union Childhood TB Learning Portal.
Learn more
Understand the issues with our fact sheets
Child & Adolescent TB Union news
The Union launches project to improve TB preventive treatment in Uganda
A research project has been launched to explore how tuberculosis (TB) preventive treatment can be improved for people living with HIV,…
The IJTLD on World TB Day
A selection of articles from IJTLD to mark World TB Day 2022.
Advancing the diagnosis of child TB: The second edition of the Diagnostic CXR Atlas
Despite substantial progress in the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis (TB) since the first edition of this publication in…
Protecting vulnerable people from TB across Francophone Africa
The implementation of contact investigation in eight Francophone Africa countries has helped protect children and people living with HIV…
BCG and The Union a 100-year history
On 18 July 1921, a newborn baby received a dose of an experimental vaccine called Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG). Fast forward 100 years and it is the most widely used vaccine globally – billions of children have been vaccinated and countless children’s lives have been saved worldwide.
The 100th anniversary of bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and the latest vaccines against COVID-19
On 18th July 2021, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first use of the BCG vaccine for TB. An Editorial in IJTLD discusses BCG’s efficacy, heterologous protection and controversial link with COVID-19. The preprint is free to read.