Tisungane Mvalo, MD, an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and the in-country Pediatric Director of UNC Project-Malawi, authored a new paper published in The Lancet Child Adolescent Health about children with severe acute malnutrition who have a high but underappreciated risk of tuberculosis.
Severe acute malnutrition affects more than 13 million children younger than 5 years worldwide and is a major risk factor for under-5 mortality. Each day more than 500 children younger than 15 years die from tuberculosis. Considerable progress has been made to control tuberculosis, but the impact on reducing the burden of childhood tuberculosis lags behind that in adults. A key barrier to decreasing morbidity and mortality associated with childhood tuberculosis is the paucity of accurate and feasible diagnostic tools for this population.
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Mvalo is a member of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases.