Pediatrician to help South African children with tuberculosis

An associate professor of pediatrics, global health, epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University […]

An associate professor of pediatrics, global health, epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine will leave for South Africa on a Fulbright Scholarship in August to help children infected with tuberculosis.

Dr. Anna Maria Mandalakas, who also is a pediatrician with Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, has been chosen as a Senior Fulbright Scholar to spend 11 months in Tygerberg, South Africa in collaboration with Stellenbosch University, according to a university news blog item.

Mandalakas plans to teach and do research on the benefits of  using a drug called isoniazid to prevent tuberculosis (TB) in children who have been infected. While not everyone who is infected gets tuberculosis, a higher percentage of children who are infected get the disease, Mandalakas said in the university’s blog item.

Though preventable, childhood TB has become a public health priority only within the last decade, she said. Children represent up to 40 percent of the tuberculosis cases in poor countries like South Africa, said Mandalakas, who has made several trips to that country in recent years as part of her research.

While in Tygerberg, she also hopes to raise awareness about tuberculosis prevention in children so policymakers can make changes.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to enrich my ongoing translational research with another dimension of operational research,” Mandalakas said in a written statement.

“While implementing our present research in South Africa, we are so frustrated as we witness children not receiving the therapy we recommend that can prevent them from getting very sick,” she said. “This Fulbright-funded research is an opportunity to actually address that problem and hopefully make a difference in the health of many children.”

Photo credit: David Ahntholz

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