A recent doctoral study at the Desmond Tutu Tuberculosis Centre at Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa has shown that hospital-based intervention could help address the tuberculosis hospital reporting gap.

The university said there were many children with tuberculosis that didn’t receive the necessary treatment because of challenges with diagnosis and reporting.

“In South Africa, thousands of children with TB fall through the cracks because they are either undiagnosed or diagnosed but unreported,” said Dr Karen du Preez from the Desmond Tutu TB Centre.

The Star newspaper in South Africa reports that a recent doctoral graduate in Paediatrics and Child Health said that to ensure proper diagnosis and reporting, TB programmes needed good monitoring and evaluation tools as well as reliable TB surveillance data for children.

Image Credits: University of Cape Town Lung Institute.