The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that the Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine is still effective for protecting children from extreme forms of tuberculosis, like TB meningitis, bone tuberculosis and other tuberculosis.
The UN body noted it is difficult to diagnose TB in children, hence the need to sustain the BCG vaccination, which is the only TB vaccination for children that is also preventive therapy for children under five when they are in contact with an infectious TB case.
WHO Technical Officer for Tuberculosis, Regional Office for Africa, Dr Jean-Louis Foe, told The Guardian that the BCG vaccine helps to decrease the burden of disease in children, considering that it is difficult technically to diagnose tuberculosis in children.
He said, “The protective effect is not 100 per cent. This vaccine is not for adults because the adults have already been exposed to TB when they are walking around the city or whatever.”
Foe revealed that there are new vaccines in the pipeline that will be administered to different target populations that are adults, adding that the organisation is waiting for a new promising vaccine that will be more effective in terms of the capacity of protection for adults.
He said, “We have preventive measures and we have preventive therapy for those who know that they have been exposed to TB. If a person is close to a TB-diagnosed patient, we have a solution for that. We have chemotherapy, a one-month treatment or a three-month treatment. So, they are well-tolerated treatments that are very effective.
“In people living with HIV, when they are given those medicines, they also decrease or remove the risk of having a TB case in the course of their life. The vaccine was one of the major weapons against TB; it might change the face of the epidemic.”
Foe identified poverty, malnutrition, diabetes and HIV as the key drivers of the high burden of TB in Africa, adding that in 2023 the region accounted for an estimated 2.5 million new TB cases, representing a quarter of the global burden, which stands at 10 million cases.
He stated that about 400,000 people in Africa lost their lives to TB in the same year, signifying that one person died of TB every minute, and the majority of these TB patient cases are also HIV-infected.
Foe said that despite the big burden of TB in Africa, the region had recorded a decline of TB incidence by 24 per cent when compared to 2015, while the mortality there has decreased by 42 per cent, stressed that these are not sufficient to reach the ambitious milestone of TB elimination by 2030
He observed that though African governments are doing their best to mobilise local resources to boost the TB response, there is still a funding gap. “We need $4 billion for our yearly plan in Africa.
We are just reaching $900 million.”
Foe noted that the aid cut by the US government will have a profound impact on TB response, especially on service delivery like support for sample transportation, diagnostic and procurement.
