South Africa: There’s a New Way to Test Kids for TB – – but the SA Health Lab Cyberattack Has Delayed Its Roll-Out

About 10% of South Africa’s 280,000 TB cases in 2022 were in children. But because it’s so difficult to diagnose the disease in this group, four in 10 kids with TB aren’t treated. Researchers at the National Health Laboratory Service were planning to test a new way to find the bug in kids later this month – until a cyberattack put a spanner in the works.

Plans to kick off a study this month to test a new way for finding tuberculosis (TB) in kids – by looking at their stool samples (poop) – have been put on hold after a cyberattack in late June shut down the National Health Laboratory Service’s computer systems, but Farzana Ismail, a clinical microbiologist with the lab network, says it “remains a priority”.

Because of the IT problems at the country’s public pathology lab service, test results now have to be processed and reported manually, slowing down feedback to doctors and patients – and upsetting plans like those for the TB testing study.

The pilot, in which stool samples were to be tested for signs of the TB germ, would have taken place over the next two months at six labs in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, she told Bhekisisa at the 8th TB Conference in Durban in early June. Together with the national TB programme, they are working towards rolling out the method at labs nationwide, says Ismail.

Finding TB in children is difficult, because kids younger than five often have only a small number of the bacteria in their lungs. This…