Child tuberculosis - why are we not winning the fight?

Centre for International Child Health host seminar looking at the challenges in tackling tuberculosis.

This month, the Institute of Global Health Innovation’s Global Health Forum joined up with the Centre for International Child Health (CICH), who were launching a new bi-monthly seminar series dedicated to International Child Health topics.

CICH aims to facilitate multi-disciplinary research partnerships and educational activities for global child health and joins up existing international child health research activities within the College and beyond.

The first seminar of this new series focused on the question, ‘Tuberculosis - why are we not winning the fight?' with a number of specialists talking on the subject.

In 2015, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that 1 million children around the world were suffering with tuberculosis. Significant challenges in tackling this important infectious disease have remained for prevention, diagnosis and treatment , in particular for drug resistant TB. 

CICH Director Professor Beate Kampmann began the seminar with an introduction on the topic. The first talk from Dr Pete Dodd from the University of Sheffield focused on how mathematical modeling can help us to understand the burden and epidemiology of childhood tuberculosis.

Dr Elizabeth Whittaker, NIHR Clinical Lecturer, in the Department of Medicine at Imperial then discussed her research into why some children get tuberculosis, proving a perspective from immunology. The final talk came from Dr James A. Seddon who gave insight into some of the current difficulties in treating children with tuberculosis and their involvement in clinical trials of new regimens. An interactive Q&A session concluded the afternoon.

The full event can be watched here.

Prior to the event, the speakers at the seminar spoke to the Infectious Diseases Hub about child tuberculosis. Listen to the podcast here.

Get involved

IGHI’s monthly Global Health Forum provides a platform to bring together Imperial researchers, students, and staff from across all of Imperial’s Faculties to highlight, discuss and disseminate findings on current research and innovations on relevant global health topics. The Forums encourage interdisciplinary discussions with the intention that they will foster inter-Faculty research initiatives and leverage the immense strengths of Imperial College to resolve global health priorities of the early 21st Century.

Join us

The next Global Health Forum will take place on 20 April at 3:00pm in Roger Bannister lecture theatre at St. Mary’s campus, Paddington and will look at alternative smoking materials.

The second CICH seminar, ‘Adolescent Mental Health – Depression in Acton and Africa’ will take place on 19 May at 4.00pm in Anthony Rothschild lecture theatre on the St. Mary’s campus. Find out more about the CICH and its seminar series here.