Abstract
BackgroundChildhood TB is an indicator of a recent transmission of the disease in a community and it is estimated to constitute 15–20% of all TB cases in many of developing countries. However, only few studies which dominated by industrial countries were engaged to assess the situation. Therefore, this study was aimed to see epidemiology of childhood TB and factors associated with poor treatment outcome in developing country.MethodUsing retrospective cross-sectional study design; Socio-demographic and clinical data of children aged less than 15 years old, treated for all forms of TB in the past 10 years (2007–2016) was collected from randomly selected eight public hospitals of Tigray. Then, Univariate logistic regression and adjusted multivariate logistic regressions was done to identify variables which had association with unsuccessful treatment outcomes at P-value less than 0.05.ResultIn the past 10 years, a total of 13,345 Tuberculosis cases were observed. Of these, 1086 (8.1%) cases were children aged less than 15 years old. Sixty seven (6.2%) cases were smear positive. Among those that tested for HIV, 69 (8.3%) cases were TB/HIV co-infected. Of those with treatment outcome record 746 (88.7%) were successfully treated. Factors like being female (AOR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.07–3.00), Age 0–5 years (AOR, 3.35; 95% CI, 2.11–5.33), Unknown HIV status (AOR, 2.44; 95% CI, 1.51–3.95) and pulmonary positive case (AOR, 2.56; 95% CI, 1.13–5.77), were more likely to have unsuccessful treatment outcome than their counterparts.ConclusionIn Tigray 8.1% all TB cases were children age less than 15 years old. Childhood TB treatment outcome varied with sex, age and HIV status.
Highlights
Childhood TB is an indicator of a recent transmission of the disease in a community and it is estimated to constitute 15–20% of all TB cases in many of developing countries
Study locations and DOTs service This study was conducted in the Tigray regional state which is located in the northern part of Ethiopia [18] with population size of 5.1 million
Cases included in the analysis and treatment outcomes Within the study period, a total of 1086 case age less than 15 years were observed in eight hospitals
Summary
Childhood TB is an indicator of a recent transmission of the disease in a community and it is estimated to constitute 15–20% of all TB cases in many of developing countries. This study was aimed to see epidemiology of childhood TB and factors associated with poor treatment outcome in developing country. Childhood tuberculosis adds nearly 15–20% of all TB cases worldwide [1,2,3]. The diagnostic difficulties of childhood TB, the child-unfriendly drug formulations together with the inclination of tuberculosis control strategy toward adult [5] ended children younger than 15 years old to remain. Children living in developing country had devastating impact of tuberculosis [3, 4]. The region had 28% of the world’s TB cases and 98% of deaths from TB worldwide [8, 9]
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