Profile of Pediatric Tuberculosis Patients in Jharkhand: A Descriptive Study

Introduction: Tuberculosis is one of the important causes of childhood morbidity and mortality. It is estimated that around 10% of the 10.4 million global incident TB cases and 250, 000 of the 1.7 million TB deaths in 2016 was found among children (less than15 years). Objectives: To assess the profile of different categories of Pediatric TB patients in Jharkhand for the year 2019 who are registered in the NIKSHAY web-based online portal. Methodology: Data was obtained from the NIKSHAY portal of State TB Cell, Jharkhand and analysed to enumerate all the relevant variables. Results: A total of 3225 pediatric TB patients were notified. Most of patients were boys (54.5%), most belonged to Drug sensitive category (99.4%) and Pulmonary TB (68.2%) being most common. Treatment success rate was 79.4%. Discussion: In our study, 22% patients were bacteriologically confirmed. The results were similar to study by Nicol et al. Extra pulmonary TB was present in 30 % cases, results were similar to study done by Wang et al. Conclusion: Special focus should be done to create awareness in community specially sensitization of teachers and students in schools regarding symptoms of TB, early diagnosis andbenefits/schemes provided in the programme.