Wellness & Fitness

Easing access to TB drugs for children

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For treating TB, young children who are unable to swallow tablets need child-friendly formulations.PHOTO | PHOTOSEARCH

Children with tuberclosis can now access drugs anywhere in the country for free after restocking by the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) to take care of their requirements.

This follows an assurance by the acting chief executive at Kemsa, Philip Omondi, who said the Ministry of Health was stocking all the products and will ensure they are available in all health facilities in the country. The stock includes drugs for managing TB and HIV.

The drugs, which are out of the reach for most patients due to their prohibitive costs, are given for free in public hospitals through funding from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and USAid.

“The Ministry will continue to embrace new technology in the management of the two killer diseases,” said Mr Omondi.

He said when not given free, the patients would not be able to afford the drugs.

For example  child-friendly fixed-dose combination formulations of isoniazid, rifampicin, ethambutol and pyrazinamide for treating TB are taken for six months and each tablet costs Sh70.

The medicines are some of the 25 drugs for children that the World Health Organisation has included in its essential medicines list which countries must have to address public health needs.

They also added 30 medicines for adults.

The WHO Essential Medicines List (EML) is used in many countries to increase access to medicines and guide decisions about which products they ensure are available for their populations.

“New advice on which antibiotics to use for common infections and which to preserve for the most serious circumstances is among the additions to the WHO Model list of essential medicines for 2017,” said Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation.

The list also include medicine for HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, cancer and leukaemia.

Dr Kieny said countries should ensure that people can access the medicines they need, when and where they need themas a vital progress towards universal health coverage.

The latest update to the WHOs Essential Medicines List contains the biggest revision of the antibiotics section in the list’s 40-year history.

“The change aims to ensure that antibiotics are available when needed, and that the right antibiotics are prescribed for the right infections.

It should enhance treatment outcomes, reduce the development of drug-resistant bacteria, and preserve the effectiveness of “last resort” antibiotics that are needed when all others fail,” said Dr Kieny.

She said the changes support WHO’s Global action plan on antimicrobial resistance, which aims to fight the development of drug resistance by ensuring the best use of antibiotics.

The latest version of the essential medicines list includes a more effective treatment for HIV as well as an older drug that can be taken to prevent HIV infection in people at high risk.

The antibiotics have been grouped into three categories, access, watch and reserve with recommendations on when each category should be used.

The International health organisation recommends that antibiotics in the “access” group be available at all times as treatments for a wide range of common infections.

Drugs in this category include amoxicillin, a widely-used antibiotic to treat infections such as pneumonia.

The “watch” antibiotics are recommended as first- or second-choice treatments for a small number of infections. The usage should be reduced to avoid further development of resistance.

This category includes drugs like ciprofloxacin, used to treat cystitis (a type of urinary tract infection) and upper respiratory tract infections (such as bacterial sinusitis and bacterial bronchitis).

The third group, “reserve” are drugs that should be considered last-resort options, and used only in the most severe circumstances when all other alternatives have failed, such as for life-threatening infections due to multidrug-resistant bacteria.

They include colistin and some cephalosporins (new generation)