Children susceptible to multi-drug resistant TB

Eight-year-old Amrita (name changed) was suffering from classic symptoms of tuberculosis meningitis. A school-going girl, she had fever, pain in limbs, paralysed eyes among other symptoms. A CT scan at KEM Hospital showed that she had TB. The doctors started the first line of treatment, but she showed no improvement.    

Tests were undertaken in Hinduja Hospital to detect if this was a case of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. The girl’s health improved after the second line treatment. She is undergoing treatment for the past 6 months which is likely to continue for another 6 months or a year. This is the first time she contracted TB. 

In an alarming trend, the number of cases of children infected with MDR-TB is increasing for the past 3-4 years, most of them contracting TB for the first time. In the past, children were not known to have this adult disease. Now, children, usually between age groups of 2-10 years constitute nearly 6-7% of the total number of child TB patients.   

The problem is not only affecting children from a lower economic rung of society, but also children from the higher class. “There are children from well-to-do families who contract MDR-TB despite having no one with the disease in the family. These children are obviously exposed to adults with multi-drug resistant TB while travelling to school or other such activities,” said Dr Ira Shah, an expert in Pediatric Infectious Diseases.

“A few years back we would not wear masks in the ward. Now, I have to wear masks and use other precautions before I come in contact with a patient. In the past, children never had a cavity in their lung that emits bacteria and infects other people,” said Dr Shah. 

She said that she was treating three children with multi-resistant TB at this point, one of who is just one-year-old and has suffered serious brain damage because of multi-drug resistant TB meningitis possibly contracted from her mother.