Objective: To allocate resources for household contact
investigations, tuberculosis (TB) programs need estimates
of the numbers of child contacts requiring care.
Design: We developed two methods to estimate annual
numbers of child contacts aged 0–14 years requiring
evaluation and treatment. Method 1 combines local data
using simple formulas. Using publicly available data,
Method 2 uses a linear regression model based on Demographic
and Health Survey and World Bank data to estimate
the number of children per household, then combines
these results with case notifications and risk
estimates of disease and infection.
Results: Applying Method 1 to data from Malawi indicated
that every year ~21000 child contacts require evaluation
and ~1900 should be diagnosed with TB. Applying
Method 2 to all countries suggested that, globally, 2.41
million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 2.36–2.46) children
aged 5 years, and 5.07 million (95%UI 4.81–5.34) children
aged 5–14 years live in households of adult patients
with known TB. Of these, 239014 (95%UI 118649–
478581) and 419816 (95%UI 140600–1268805), respectively,
will have TB. An additional 848453 (95%UI
705838–1017551) and 2660885 (95%UI 2080517–
3413189), respectively, will be infected.
Conclusion: It is feasible to use available data to set programmatic
evaluation and treatment targets to improve
care for child contacts of patients with TB.