Tuberculosis/HIV Prevalence and Treatment Success among Children Receiving Care in Two Tertiary Health Facilities within Ogun State, Nigeria.

BACKGROUND: About 1 million children become ill with tuberculosis every year, representing 10-12% of all cases of tuberculosis notified globally. HIV infection in children is often due to transmission from mothers to children. HIV infection in children increases their risk of having tuberculosis. Sub-Sahara Africa has one of the highest TB incidences and HIV prevalence thus children in this region bear a huge burden of TB/HIV infection. In addition, the treatment success rate in many countries is rarely disaggregated to evaluate children. Thus, this study aims to determine the prevalence of TB/HIV coinfection and treatment success among children with tuberculosis attending clinics in two tertiary institutions in Ogun State, Nigeria.

METHODOLOGY: The study was a retrospective cohort study of routine programme data of all children diagnosed and treated for tuberculosis from January 2015 to June 2017 in two tertiary hospitals in OgunState, Nigeria. The hospitals were Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital Sagamu and Federal Medical Centre Abeokuta, Ogun State. Data were retrieved from the facility TB register and analyzed using epi info.

RESULTS: A total of 759 patients were registered for treatment at the two tertiary facilities between January 2015 and June 2017. Of these, 112(14.8%) were children 0-14 years of age. Most of the children (95.54%) had pulmonary tuberculosis. Treatment success was 81.3%. About half (46.4%) of the patients were HIV positive. Age, site of disease, bacteriological diagnosis, and weight at the commencement of treatment were significantly associated with HIV status while none of the socio-demographic variables were associated with treatment outcome.

CONCLUSION: There is a need to look for ways to further improve the current treatment success rate of children with tuberculosis. There should be increased efforts also to find better ways of diagnosing childhood tuberculosis. The high HIV rate among children with TB is of concern and strategies should be put in place to prevent HIV transmission to children.