The Sentinel Project has assembled a list of publications highlighting DR-TB in children and adolescents published in 2017. This list can be found here.
The Sentinel Project resource, “How to Care for People Exposed to Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: A Practical Guide” is now available.
This Guide builds on World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for the management of individuals who have been exposed to TB and DR-TB, but focuses more on the practical implementation of interventions that should take place in the post-exposure setting. While the WHO policies stress that investigating household contacts of TB patients must be done on an “urgent” basis for all contacts of a patient with DR-TB, there is limited information available on what these evaluations and interventions should include. Furthermore, many of the recommendations and tools that do exist only focus on medical issues, omitting other pressing psychosocial needs that must be routinely assessed as well. DR-TB affects not only individuals but their households as well. Even when only one person has become sick, the whole household requires some intervention to reduce discrimination, improve patient support, and avoid unnecessary morbidity and mortality. This Guide aims to provide a way of thinking about the challenges around those exposed to DR-TB. It also aims to provide guidance on DR-TB prevention and management strategies needed to address the enormous health threat presented by DR-TB, as well as the tools necessary to carry them out.
This Guide is available in English and Spanish.
For additional translations of the Field Guide, please send a note to Sentinel_Project@hms.harvard.edu.
On November 21, 2017, the Sentinel Project co-sponsored a webinar with DR-TB STAT, entitled “MDR-TB Treatment with Bedaquiline in Children and Adolescents: Global Recommendations and Program Experience in Belarus.” Dr. Alena Skrahina, MD, PhD, DSc, presented interim results of bedaquiline use in the treatment of children and adolescents with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Belarus. Dr. Skrahina discussed the acceptability of bedaquiline-containing regimens, culture conversion results, and the occurrence of adverse events. Dr. Skrahina was joined by Dr. Jennifer Furin as commentator and moderator.
On October 26, 2017, the Sentinel Project sponsored a presentation by Dr. Anthony Garcia-Prats and Dr. Anja Reuter entitled “Recent Developments in the Field of Pediatric MDR-TB.” Dr. Garcia-Prats reviewed emerging pharmacokinetic data on repurposed and novel second-line antituberculosis drugs in children, with a focus on implications for pediatric dosing. He reviewed ongoing pediatric trials and discuss expected data from these trials. Dr. Reuter discussed early experience with new TB drugs in early adolescents and children. She presented clinical cases of adolescents on treatment with new DR-TB drugs in a primary health care setting in Khayelitsha, South Africa. Dr. Garcia-Prats and Dr. Reuter were joined by Dr. Jennifer Furin as commentator and moderator. Slides from the webinar are available here.