Consolidated Guidelines

The production and writing of the WHO consolidated guidelines on tuberculosis. Module 5: management of tuberculosis in children and adolescents, 2022 was coordinated by Sabine Verkuijl, Annemieke Brands, Kerri Viney and Tiziana Masini, under the guidance of Farai Mavhunga, head of the TB Vulnerable Populations, Communities and Comorbidities unit and the overall direction of Tereza Kasaeva, Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Tuberculosis (TB) Programme.

This section summarizes a series of complementary systematic reviews aimed at describing the risk of developing tuberculosis (TB) infection or progressing to TB disease in specific at-risk populations. It also provides a brief description of the effect of treatment on infectiousness.

Further research is needed in the following areas:

1. the role of surgery – that is, decisions about when to operate, and the type of surgical intervention, and drug-resistance patterns; and
2. improved collection, reporting and standardization of data on surgery, including long-term survival post-surgery.  

Further research is needed in the following areas:

The political declaration at the first United Nations (UN) high-level meeting on tuberculosis (TB) held on 26 September 2018 included commitments by Member States to four new global targets ³ , which were subsequently renewed at the second UN high-level meeting on TB on 22 September 2023⁴ . One of these targets is that at least 90 per cent of the estimated number of people who develop TB are reached with quality-assured diagnosis and treatment in the 5-year period 2023–2027³ .

1. Global tuberculosis report 2019 (WHO/CDS/TB/2019.15). Geneva World Health Organization; 2019 (https://www.who.int/tb/publications/global_report/en/).
2. Companion handbook to the WHO guidelines for the programmatic management of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

No research gaps were identified.