title: Counting children with tuberculosis: why numbers matter.
abstract: In the last 5 years, childhood tuberculosis (TB) has received increasing attention from international organisations, national TB programmes and academics. For the first time, a number of different groups are developing techniques to estimate the burden of childhood TB. We review the challenges in diagnosing TB in children and the reasons why cases in children can go unreported. We discuss the importance of an accurate understanding of burden for identifying problems in programme delivery, targeting interventions, monitoring trends, setting targets, allocating resources appropriately and providing strong advocacy. We briefly review the estimates produced by new analytical methods, and outline the reasons for recent improvements in our understanding and potential future directions. We conclude that while innovation, collaboration and better data have improved our understanding of the childhood TB burden, it remains substantially incomplete.
authors.affiliation: Department of Paediatrics, Imperial College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Seddon
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: H E
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Jenkins
authors.affiliation: Institute for International Programs, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.affiliation: Institute for International Programs, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Black
authors.affiliation: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vos
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Becerra
authors.affiliation: Centre for International Child Health, University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics and Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Graham
authors.affiliation: Global TB Programme, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sismanidis
authors.affiliation: School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Dodd
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D000067576:Child Health; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D017281:Cost of Illness; D006801:Humans; D014376:Tuberculosis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D014944:World Health Organization