Tuberculosis

The Institute of Child Health and Human Development has spearheaded research projects that address tuberculosis (TB) in the Philippines. From 2013 to 2015, with support from the Hanako Foundation of Singapore, the ICHHD implemented a prospective, community-based TB surveillance program for tuberculosis in San Juan, Batangas, a rural community in southern Luzon. This study, in collaboration with the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) and the National Telehealth Center (NThC) of the UPM-NIH, marked the first of its kind conducted in a rural area in the Philippines. The study aimed to describe the epidemiology of TB in the community, and its findings have been published and presented at several scientific conferences. Moreover, the project was instrumental in establishing San Juan’s health unit as the center for the Programmatic Management of Drug-resistant TB (PMDT) in the region, serving several municipalities and significantly improving TB case-finding rates.

In 2014, the Institute was awarded a competitive grant from the USAID Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement Research (PEER) program to implement a field trial assessing the effectiveness of an intervention package aimed at improving TB case detection and treatment outcomes for children. This second TB research study, conducted from 2015 to 2017 in San Juan, Batangas and Los Baños, Laguna, was carried out in collaboration with the RITM, the NThC, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Following this study, in 2017, the Institute received a four-year grant from the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology. This grant enabled the Institute to become the first field site in the Philippines for the Regional Prospective Observational Research of Tuberculosis (RePORT) International, a global consortium of TB research cohorts. Spearheaded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the Division of AIDS (DAIDS), RePORT aims to facilitate coordinated TB research through pooled data and specimens for future studies.

In 2018, the Institute expanded its efforts by collaborating with the Global Good Fund-Intellectual Ventures to develop new diagnostic assays for Mycobacterium tuberculosis at the same study sites of San Juan and Los Baños.

These research projects underscore the Institute’s commitment to tackling TB, a critical global health problem. The Institute will continue to engage and collaborate with different government and non-government partners to address one of the most pressing health problems facing the country.