MSF demands sustained investment to end neglect of children with tuberculosis
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This World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges governments and international donors to bring children to the heart of the global TB response, and commit to investing in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of TB in children. No child should suffer or die from a disease that is both preventable and treatable.
“In an already underfunded TB response, children are pushed further to the back of the line when services are disrupted by aid cuts, conflict, or displacement,” says Dr Cathy Hewison, lead of MSF’s TB working group. “The tools to diagnose and treat children with TB exist, even if imperfect, yet only half of the children who have TB are diagnosed or treated.
“For a truly global TB response, children cannot remain an afterthought and must be prioritised now,” says Dr Hewison.
As per the World Health Organization (WHO)’s 2025 Global TB Report, 1.2 million children and young adolescents aged less than 15 years old fell ill with TB in 2024. The Report also revealed that a staggering 43 per cent of children under 15 years old missed TB diagnosis and could not access treatment in 2024, a statistic that has not improved from previous years. The situation is worse for children with TB below five years old, with only half of them accessing TB diagnosis and care.
In an already underfunded TB response, children are pushed further to the back of the line when services are disrupted by aid cuts, conflict, or displacement. Dr Cathy Hewison, lead of MSF’s TB working group.
Despite this grim reality, we can get closer to reaching the children who are missing out by effectively implementing the WHO guidelines on diagnosis and treatment. For instance, an efficient way to diagnose TB in children under 10 years old is by using the WHO-recommended treatment decision algorithms – these are guided scoring systems that allow healthcare workers to diagnose TB based on clinical symptoms alone (in combination with an x-ray, if available), or when laboratory tests are unavailable or appear negative.
Based on recent research conducted by MSF in Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Uganda, the use of the WHO algorithms can nearly double the number of children who can be diagnosed with TB and subsequently started on lifesaving treatment.
MSF teams frequently see children with TB whose treatment is delayed due to no, or inappropriate, diagnosis approaches, or because physicians simply do not think of TB. In Mueda, Mozambique, Francisco, an 11-year-old boy, began showing signs of TB in July 2024, yet his symptoms were overlooked for months. It was only in March 2025 that he finally started appropriate TB treatment.
“At first, I noticed that my child was weak and had no appetite,” says Fernando Jorge Anasomia, Francisco’s father. “Initially, they [doctors] didn't do any tests. When tests were [finally] done, nothing showed up. They told us that the child had no disease.”
“When we went to the hospital for the second time and had the tests done again, that’s when they told us that the child had drug-resistant TB,” he says. “It took a long time to start the treatment even though he started to feel ill eight months ago.”
Implementation of the WHO algorithms in routine care in MSF-supported health facilities is showing a significant increase in the number of children diagnosed with TB.
“The impact of implementing the WHO treatment decision algorithms in Niger has been a catalyst for hope,” says Dr Moussa Mamane Oumarou Farouk, TB focal point for MSF in Niger. “In 2024 and 2025, nearly half of all the children under five years of age who were diagnosed with TB in the country were in the five districts where MSF supports the implementation of the algorithms.”
The impact of implementing the WHO treatment decision algorithms in Niger has been a catalyst for hope." Dr Moussa Mamane Oumarou Farouk, TB focal point for MSF in Niger
“Considering there are a total of 72 districts in Niger, scaling up these approaches across the country, together with the Ministry of Public Health and Hygiene, could significantly close the gap in diagnosing TB in children and prevent more avoidable deaths,” says Dr Moussa Mamane Oumarou Farouk.
Every missed sign and every delayed decision push children with TB closer to severe disease and death. Greater political will and investments from governments and international donors are urgently needed to ensure lifesaving tools for preventing, diagnosing, and treating TB are available to all children.