TACTIC: Test, Avoid, Cure TB in Children
A survey of paediatric tuberculosis policies in 14 countries
Every 3 minutes, a child dies from tuberculosis (TB), and more than half of all children with TB are never diagnosed. Suboptimal TB tests and challenging prevention and treatment regimens underlie these grim statistics, making paediatric TB a persistent problem for governments and healthcare providers.
In 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued new guidelines on preventing, diagnosing and treating paediatric TB. If adopted and implemented, these guidelines could drastically improve the diagnosis and quality of care for children with TB.
In the same year, MSF launched a new initiative to “Test, Avoid, Cure Tuberculosis in Children” (TACTiC), providing pilot data to implement the new WHO guidelines in MSF programmes in over a dozen countries in Africa and Asia. In addition, the initiative aims to demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the recommendations in different country contexts and advocate for their widespread implementation across national health systems.
To aid this effort, a policy survey was conducted to assess the adoption of the WHO guidelines into national policy frameworks in 14 countries in which MSF provides TB care. This report summarises findings from the policy survey across four thematic chapters, covering diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB. The conclusion sets out key recommendations for governments, funders and international stakeholders.
Factsheets detailing the paediatric TB scenario and policy alignment in each of the 14 countries; a dashboard presenting the key findings; and raw survey data accompany the report, and are available as downloadable files.