TB Treatment Support to Keep Kids in School

Children in the communities we serve are highly vulnerable to absenteeism from school due to chronic illness and lack of successful treatment. Due to their extreme poverty, highly dense communities, and the toxic environment of the dumpsites where they live, the public health services available to them are under-funded and overwhelmed with demand. Students are often unable to get the early medical attention they need or complete their treatment as medically required. As a result, our communities experience high incidences of student dropouts, grade repeaters, and underperformance when they are in school due to treatable illnesses.

Two common illnesses in the children we serve is (i) the tuberculous infection called “primary complex” and upper respiratory infections, which lead to a host of other health and medical issues, especially malnutrition. Primary complex is found in children exposed to mycobacterium tuberculosis in an adult. The child remains healthy and usually has no symptoms until their immune system declines and the disease becomes active. If primary complex is left untreated, it may eventually evolve into active tuberculosis. Primary Complex is a 6 month long daily treatment at a registered health facility, which is often interrupted in the poorest patients due to financial and time constraints unless there are adequate social supports and convenient treatment centers. Medicine must be given every day for 6 months. If not, the bacteria evolves and develop into a more med-resistant kind. Children with symptomatic cases of primary complex have a compromised immune system and often require treatment for other illnesses. Children need convenient, efficient access to medical services and treatment to ensure they recover from their illness and with the least interruption to their schooling.  In our years of experience, we learned that extremely poor children need additional health and nutrition interventions to boost their school attendance and performance. We provide students with free, nutritional breakfast and lunch every school day and monitor their height and weight monthly. We also operate a clinic in our Tondo center and have mobile services in our other centers.

Our health and human services and programs support our educational programs by providing psycho-social support, crisis intervention, medical care, and nutrition programs to all our students and their families living in the communities of Smokey Mountain and Barangay 105 dumpsite.

What we need:Tuberculosis Medications Antibiotics

Other medicines

Vitamins & Supplements

Anthelmintic

Clinic medical supplies