Many a parent has endured the thankless task of trying to give a baby or toddler medication. Most kids spit it out and then run a mile, leaving you guessing as to how much they have taken, or how on earth you are going to get the next dose into them.
Now, spare a thought for the parents of the almost two million children worldwide that are estimated to be infected with the bacteria that causes the often deadly multidrug-resistant tuberculosis disease. Until recently, the only options were extremely bitter-tasting medications that needed to be taken for months on end.
However, in rare good news in a field where the development of pediatric treatments has often been neglected, a study has shown that a fruit-flavored medicine — taken once-daily for six months — cut a child’s risk of developing MDR-TB disease by more than half.
The trial is significant because while TB is preventable and curable, older treatments can take as long as two years to complete. Patients on these regimens must take as many as 14,000 pills during the full course of treatment. Some have to endure months of painful daily injections. These interventions can also cause terrible side effects, including acute psychosis and permanent deafness.
Also, because of chronic underfunding, children typically end up at the back of the queue when it comes to getting therapies adapted to their needs.
That means that four in five children and young adolescents with the form of the disease that is resistant to first-line anti-TB drugs did not access treatment in the past five years, according to the World Health Organization. Earlier this month, the WHO released an updated five-year plan to combat TB in this vulnerable age group.
But it’s not only children who are ill-protected against the disease that caused 1.3 million deaths last year, says Unitaid spokesperson Herve Verhoosel. Those who are pregnant and those struggling with substance-use disorders are often less protected. Fortunately progress is being made here too.
A recent trial including people usually marginalized in studies, such as expectant mothers, found four new all-oral drug regimens that were effective, safer, and needed fewer months of swallowing pills than the traditional interventions. And like the fruit-flavored option for children, the key ingredients are already widely available.
Finding different treatment options that don’t make you gag or worse is essential because, like other infectious diseases, TB is usually spread among households. If you only treat one member of a family, the battle to fight drug-resistant TB could already be lost.
While my son clearly has a respiratory infection, he doesn’t have any of the other regular TB symptoms such as fever, tiredness, sweating at night time or weight loss and our doctor hasn’t suggested a TB test.
For parents that aren’t as fortunate and discover their child does need TB treatment, these new options can’t come soon enough. — Janice Kew
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