Childhood TB training toolkit

Overview

Background

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Union today released a training toolkit to combat childhood tuberculosis (TB). The training focuses on building the capacity of health care workers at the primary and secondary level to address and manage TB in children.

Overview

The main objectives of the toolkit are to:

• Increase detection of children with TB in the community;
• Improve the management of children with TB;
• Increase implementation of child contact screening and preventive therapy; and,
• Provide accurate data on childhood TB for better monitoring and evaluation.

The main target audiences for training are the national TB programme and the health workers that manage sick children and/or TB cases of any age in the community or at the more peripheral level of health care – primary health care facilities and district hospitals.

The toolkit consists of ten modules covering a range of topics from epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment to managing childhood TB in the community.