Tuberculosis cases in children and adolescents under 15 years of age increased by 10% in the WHO European Region during 2023. These data emerged from a tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring report 2025, published a day earlier (24 March) on the occasion of World Tuberculosis Day 2025, by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (WHODC).
Tuberculosis is an infectious and contagious disease that usually affects the lungs and is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, also called “Koch's Bacillus” after the German doctor who discovered it. It still represents one of the 10 leading causes of death in the world and after three years of absolute dominance by CoViD-19, it has returned to be the leading cause of death caused by a single infectious agent. In 2023, 1.25 million people died from tuberculosis.
Why are cases in children worrisome?
Not all people who become infected develop the disease. About a quarter of the world's population has what is called latent tuberculosis infection, a condition in which the tuberculosis bacterium is present in a dormant state. Only 5-15% of people with latent infection develop actual disease during their lifetime, but because children under 5 years of age are at increased risk of developing the disease during the first year of infection, pediatric TB is considered a warning sign of the presence of TB in a community. Only people with the overt form of the disease are contagious, through respiratory secretions exhaled, for example, by coughing.
Growing
New data show that tuberculosis cases in children and adolescents under 15 years of age in the 29 countries of Europe and the European Economic Area account for 4.3% of total cases registered in the region. Between 2022 and 2023, reported cases of pediatric tuberculosis increased from 1,341 to 1,689, a small but steady increase for the third consecutive year. There were about 39,000 cases of TB in the general population of the 29 countries. Looking further afield, in the WHO European Region, which includes Europe and Central Asia, there were more than 172,000 new or relapsed cases of tuberculosis in 2023, a similar level to 2022.
The problem of drug resistance
Also worrying is the fact that for one in five children with tuberculosis in the study area it is not known whether the antibiotic treatment of the disease has been completed. The pharmacological treatment of tuberculosis is based on the use of different antibiotics for a fairly long period of time - generally 4 first-line drugs - and adherence to therapy is essential to avoid incomplete cycles that can favor the development of drug-resistant bacteria.
Multidrug-resistant TB can develop when the initial prescribed drugs are mismanaged or ineffective, and requires treatment with rarer, more expensive drugs that have more side effects. In 2023, only two in five people with this form of tuberculosis had access to adequate treatment.
Let's not give up.
Since 2000, global efforts to combat tuberculosis have saved approximately 79 million lives, and it is important not to give up now: the goal of ending tuberculosis is in fact one of the cornerstones of Goal 3 of the 2030 Agenda.
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