Author(s)

Bourama Kané^1*, Korotoumou Wéllé Diallo¹, Aboubacar Sangaré¹, Youssouf Dembélé¹, Garan Dabo², Mamadou Traoré³, Mohamed Maba Traoré⁴, Mamadou Berthé⁵, Mariam Maiga⁶

¹Department of Pediatrics, Mali Hospital, Bamako, Mali.
²Department of Medicine, Mali Hospital, Bamako, Mali.
³Reference Health Center of Commune V, Bamako, Mali.
⁴Medical Imaging Department, Mali Hospital, Bamako, Mali.
⁵National Institute of Public Health, Bamako, Mali.
⁶Reference Health Center of Commune VI, Bamako, Mali.

Introduction: In 2020, an estimated 9.9 million people are living with tuberculosis worldwide, including 1.1 million children. Tuberculosis is the 2^nd leading cause of death from infectious disease after COVID-19 and the 13^th leading cause of death worldwide. Objective: To collect cases of tuberculosis in children aged 1 month to 15 years in order to study the epidemio-clinical aspects in the pediatric department of the Mali Hospital during the period 2015-2021. Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive, retrospective study from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2020, and a prospective study from January 1 to December 31, 2021, among children aged 1 month to 15 years admitted for suspected tuberculosis in the pediatric ward of the Mali Hospital. Results: From January 2015 to December 2021, we collected 69 cases of tuberculosis among 9438 hospitalized children, i.e. a frequency of 0.73%. The average age was 6.16 years with extremes of 3 months and 15 years. The sex ratio was 1.1% in favor of boys. The majority of children were vaccinated against tuberculosis (88.4%). The most frequent symptoms were fever (76.8%) and weight loss (73.9%). The pulmonary form was the most frequent (54.9%). Bacteriological confirmation was done in 43.5% of our children. It was Mycobacterium tuberculosis in all confirmed cases. More than half of our children (65.2%) were treated with first-line anti-tuberculosis drugs for 6 months. We observed a cure in 42.0% of our patients and a case fatality rate of 39.1%. Conclusion: Tuberculosis in children is frequent in Mali Hospital despite good BCG vaccination coverage. Its mortality remains high and is maintained by malnutrition, HIV, and the emergence of resistant strains of bacilli.

Tuberculosis, Children, Mali Hospital

Kané, B. , Diallo, K. , Sangaré, A. , Dembélé, Y. , Dabo, G. , Traoré, M. , Traoré, M. , Berthé, M. and Maiga, M. (2022) Study of Tuberculosis in Children Aged 1 Month to 15 Years in the Pediatric Ward of the Hospital of Mali 2015-2021. Open Journal of Pediatrics, 12, 433-448. doi: 10.4236/ojped.2022.122047.