Jakarta, IO – Indonesia is the country with the third-highest incidence of tuberculosis (TB) in the world, right after India and China. The 2021 Global Tuberculosis Report declared that 824,000 TB cases were reported in Indonesia for the year, 40,000 of them suffered by children.
“TB or TBC is caused by the Mycrobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. Some Indonesians quaintly refer to it as ‘paru-paru basah’ (‘wet lungs’) or ‘flek paru’ (‘speckles in the lungs’). It primarily attacks the lungs, but it may also attack the meninges, the intestines, the lymph nodes, the bones,” said dr. Reisa Broto Asmoro, Indonesia’s Stop TB Ambassador, in the “Recognize and Prevent Child TB during the Covid-19 Pandemic” live IG held on Monday (15/08/2022).
TB infection occurs the same way as Covid-19, i.e., mostly through saliva, phlegm, or mucous spatter of infected people when they speak, cough, or sneeze. As children have much lower immunity, toddlers five years or younger, possibly stunted (i.e. suffering from malnutrition), born from a mother who suffers from HIV – these run a much higher risk of TB infection than any other groups.
“TB symptoms among children and adults are the same. Therefore, parents can identify it more easily. They should start becoming suspicious if: their child loses weight rapidly over the past two months for no apparent reason; suffers a fever for two consecutive weeks, or gets repeated fevers, even though their temperature does not rise too high; suffers from a cough for more than two weeks – one that gets worse as time passes; the child remains listless and shows no improvement despite the administration of antibiotics,” dr. Reisa said.