Hindustan Times: New Delhi: Monday, 04 August 2014.
More older
children are falling prey to childhood tuberculosis (TB), an RTI query has
revealed. A total of 124 childhood TB deaths were recorded in the past three
years. Year-wise, however, the total number of deaths has actually gone down.
The RTI plea revealed that the highest number of deaths (74) was recorded among
children in the age group of 14-18. There were 35 deaths among children between
10 and 14 years. The one to 10-year group recorded 15 deaths in three years.
Similarly,
the number of TB cases reported show that children in the older age group are
more susceptible to the disease.
Of the total
number of childhood tuberculosis cases (16,542) in Delhi in three years, the
highest was recorded in the age group of 14-18 (8,989), followed by aged
between 10 and 14 (4,450).
This means
that incidence of tuberculosis almost doubles with increasing age.
“There is a
sudden spurt in the prevalence as well as mortality among children in the age
group of 10-14 years, which doubles in the age group of 14-18 years,” said
Arvind Singh, a child rights activist, who filed the RTI application.
“Most
children who are affected by tuberculosis live in slums and densely populated
areas. It is likely that children who were vaccinated lose their resistance
power to the disease as they grow older and become prone to TB as they live in
poor conditions such as poor hygienic conditions, bad food habits and other
environmental factors,” said Dr Anil Bansal, member, Delhi Medical Council
(DMC).
“TB is both
curable and preventable, hence an integrated approach for strengthening primary
health care system, awareness among community, complete vaccination of children
and community-based preventive strategies are required,” added Singh.
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