A million children worldwide develop tuberculosis every year.
A six-month course of pills can cure the disease and ward off the threat of death forever. The problem is that children with tuberculosis have to pop in the same pills as adults, and we all know how good kids are with large, metallic tasting medicines.
A big lacuna in the treatment of tuberculosis has been the lack of kid-friendly drugs. As a result, many children drop the treatment mid-way. Also, crushed up portions of adult-sized medicines never gave precise dosages to kids. As a result, 32,000 children across the world (mostly in countries like India) get the deadly superbugs, which make treatment tougher and are often fatal (source: CDC Atlanta). What’s worse, the number of children contracting TB is 25% more than what the World Health Organisation had predicted five years back.
But now the announcement of a berry-flavoured child-friendly drug is a huge leap against this deadly disease which kills a fourth of the children it affects.