Child and Adolescent TB Centre of Excellence

The Union's Child and Adolescent Tuberculosis Centre of Excellence is a virtual network of public health experts in child and adolescent tuberculosis (TB) in the sub-Saharan Africa region, providing a community of learning and practice for child and adolescent TB. The current COE member countries are Cameroon, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

This network, coordinated by The Union's Uganda Office in collaboration with the Global TB Branch in the Division of Global HIV and TB, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), offers technical expertise, capacity building, south to south learning opportunities, and promotes collaboration across the region.

Historically, most interventions to find, cure and prevent TB have focused on adults. However, TB has always posed a grave threat to children, who are more likely to progress quickly to severe disease than adults and face greater challenges in securing a diagnosis and appropriate treatment. In 2018, the World Health Organization, CDC, UNICEF, The Union and other global health groups released the Roadmap towards ending TB in children and adolescents. The Roadmap describes existing barriers to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention for children and adolescents, including the unique characteristics of childhood TB that make diagnosis a particular challenge.  Adolescence is also recognised as an age with an increased risk of infection and disease due to TB, but with a much greater risk of transmission than young children with TB, especially in older adolescents (15-19 years). Due to reporting and age disaggregation practices , the true burden of disease in adolescents is uncertain.

The Centre of Excellence has also constituted an Advisory Committee with organisational representatives from The Union, CDC, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Stop TB Partnership, Unitaid, USAID Headquarters, WHO HQ, UNICEF, a representative of TB civil society, and individual members Dr Jeffrey Starke Professor of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital and Dr Anneke Hesseling Director of Desmond Tutu TB Centre and SARcHi Chair in Paediatric Tuberculosis.