Consolidated Guidelines

PICO questions:

a. In children and adolescents with signs and symptoms of TB, should decentralization of child and adolescent TB services versus centralized child and adolescent TB services (at referral or tertiary hospital level) be used?

b. In children and adolescents exposed to TB, should decentralization of child and adolescent TB prevention and care services versus centralized prevention and care services (at referral or tertiary hospital level) be used to increase coverage of TPT in eligible children and adolescents?

Recommendations:

In TB high burden settings, decentralized models of care may be used to deliver TB services to children and adolescents with signs and symptoms of TB and/or those exposed to TB (conditional recommendation, very low certainty evidence).

Family-centred, integrated models of care to deliver TB services may be used in children and adolescents with signs and symptoms of TB and/or those exposed to TB, in addition to standard models of care (conditional recommendation, very low certainty evidence).

This chapter contains two new recommendations and other valid WHO recommendations that apply to patient support and models of care (section 6.2). The two new recommendations, on the implementation of decentralized models of care and integrated family-centred models of care to improve both case detection and the provision of TPT, are described in full detail as this information is being published for the first time.

Recommendation

In children with MDR/RR-TB aged below 3 years delamanid may be used as part of longer regimens (conditional recommendation, very low certainty of evidence).

Remarks

• This recommendation complements the current WHO recommendation on longer regimens that contain delamanid (9):

- Delamanid may be included in the treatment of MDR/RR-TB patients aged 3 years or more on longer regimens (conditional recommendation, moderate certainty in the estimates of effect).

Recommendation

In children with MDR/RR-TB aged below 6 years, an all-oral treatment regimen containing bedaquiline may be used(conditional recommendation, very low certainty of the evidence).

Remarks

Around 25 000-32 000 children are estimated to develop MDR/RR-TB every year (75-77). In 2018, 3398 children (aged below 15 years) were started on second-line treatment for MDR/RR-TB. After increasing to 5586 in 2019, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this number dropped back to 3234 in 2020, representing only 2.5% of the total number of persons with MDR/RR-TB initiated on treatment and only 10.1%-12.9% of the estimated number of children with incident MDR/RR-TB (78).

Implementation of this recommendation should be subject to ongoing monitoring and evaluation to ensure high quality implementation adapted to the local context. Uptake of the regimen and monitoring of treatment outcomes among patients who receive this regimen are also of interest. The overall incidence of TBM as a form of EPTB in children and adolescents reflects the ongoing transmission of TB to children, as well as delays in the diagnosis of TB and is therefore important information to monitor as well.

One key implementation consideration is the administration of the intervention regimen with the correct dosages of the included medicines, using currently available child-friendly formulations, including FDC formulations when possible. The regimen includes isoniazid, rifampicin, pyrazinamide and ethionamide, and is dosed as follows:

Children living with HIV infection: Most studies in the review were restricted to HIV-negative children. HIV-positive children represented a small proportion of children with TBM overall, and all received the intervention regimen. In the three studies using the intervention regimen included in the evidence review, 11 children were identified as having HIV infection (of a total of 724 children). Therefore, it was not possible to undertake analyses stratified by HIV infection.