Happy Children’s Day to the child in each one of us!
Thirty years ago, on this day, world leaders made a promise to every child to promote and protect their rights, including the right to life and the right to health, by adopting the historic Convention of the Rights of the Child.
Every child has the right to a safe and healthy childhood. Yet, tuberculosis (TB), the world’s top infectious killer, continues to violate this very right. In 2018, 1.1 million children fell with TB and over 200 000 children lost their lives to TB, including more than 30 000 with HIV. Of the children who lost their lives, 80% had not even reached their fifth birthday. It is unacceptable that any child loses their life to TB – a preventable and curable disease!
Last year, at the UN General Assembly high-level meeting on TB, Heads of State, Ministers and other leaders committed to reaching at least 3.5 million children with TB care and 4 million children under 5 with TB preventive services. Countries need to step up efforts in detection and prevention to get on track to reach these targets. Latest estimates suggest that over half of the children (aged below 15 years) estimated to have fallen ill with TB in 2018, missed out on access to quality care, making it a much higher gap in detection than that in adults (30%). This gap is even higher in children in the 0-4 year age-group (63%). Finding and treating all people with TB – including children and adolescents – is an urgent priority, particularly in high-burden countries. TB prevention is also lagging far behind – especially for children. As reported in the 2019 WHO Global TB Report, only 27.5% of eligible children under 5 received TB preventive treatment in 2018.
In order to support countries in scaling up efforts to end TB in children and adolescents, and reach targets, WHO developed and launched a roadmap with UNICEF and other partners, that was launched on the side-lines of the UN high-level meeting on TB in 2018. The roadmap emphasizes that achieving the goal of ending TB in children and adolescents requires sustained advocacy, greater leadership and accountability, functional partnerships and increased funding. While countries have begun to adopt and implement the roadmap, much more remains to be done.
As an important step in this direction, WHO is convening over 100 representatives from countries, partners and civil society in Hanoi, Viet Nam next week at the Global Consultation on Ending TB in Children and Adolescents for High Burden and Priority Countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, South East Asia and Western Pacific regions, to discuss and share experiences on progress in implementing the roadmap, strengthen multisectoral and multi-stakeholder collaboration, and plan the way forward to ensure every child’s right to access TB prevention and care. We will share the outcomes of this important consultation and its deliberations soon.
In addition, WHO is empowering young people to play a greater role in the fight to end TB. This year, WHO launched a youth engagement initiative and collaborated with young people in the development and adoption of the first youth declaration to end TB. We need the power of youth with their innovative thinking and radical approaches if we are to succeed in winning the fight against TB.
As children come together to commemorate Children’s Day today by turning the world blue in support of child rights, demanding every right for every child, we need to stop and listen. Their young lives and futures hang in the balance especially against deadly diseases like TB. We are accountable to them – as people with power to shape their lives and our collective future. We cannot let them down!