New WHO Guidelines on Symptom Based Childhood Contact Screening For Tuberculosis: Relevance to National Tuberculosis Program of India

Globally there is a growing emphasis on efforts to identify and treat the “missed millions” of Tuberculosis (TB) cases. In India, 5% of the new TB cases are in the pediatric age group [1] and studies have reported that 3.2–16.2% of child contacts have TB disease [2]. In view of the susceptibility of younger children to developing TB of increased severity on contact with an active case of tuberculosis, screening of childhood contacts is recommended by the WHO and is also part of most National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) guidelines. Contact screening helps in identifying contacts of all ages with undiagnosed TB disease among the contacts of an index case, and in providing preventive therapy for childhood contacts without TB disease. However, diagnosis of TB in children is often missed due to the complexities in screening and diagnosis under field conditions.