A new international consensus statement published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health sets out a clear roadmap to strengthen tuberculosis (TB) research for children and adolescents, a population that continues to bear a disproportionate and often invisible burden of TB disease and death.

 

Led by the WHO‑hosted Child and Adolescent TB Working Group, the paper reports the outcomes of a rigorous global Delphi process that identified eight core research principles and 21 priority research areas across the TB care cascade, from prevention and diagnosis to treatment and post‑treatment outcomes. The statement highlights urgent gaps in child‑ and adolescent‑specific TB evidence, particularly around early diagnosis, shorter and safer treatment and preventive regimens, and tuberculous meningitis, and calls for greater investment, stronger implementation research, and the meaningful inclusion of children, adolescents, and people with lived experience in research.

 

At a time of declining TB research funding, the authors emphasise that these agreed priorities provide a critical framework to focus limited resources where they can deliver the greatest clinical and public health impact for young people affected by TB worldwide.

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Click here to read the paper.