Daifulah Alzahrani
Tuberculosis (TB) is considered by WHO as global health emergency in 1993. In 2011 one third of the world’s population was thought to be infected with TB and 8.7 million cases of active TB annually. BCG vaccine is one of the effective control measures to prevent TB. It is in practice since 1960s where TB is highly prevalent and 120 million BCG vaccines are given annually, that is effective in preventing severe disease of extrapulmonary TB. BCG vaccine is alive attenuated vaccine that potentially could prevent TB meningitis and disseminated diseases. However, it could cause local infection, in about 1:10,000 to 1:1,000,000 in immune competent individuals and significantly higher when given to immunodeficient subjects. Immunodeficient infants who receive BCG vaccine at birth could develop disseminated BCGitis, which is associated with high morbidity and mortality. However, those who develop disseminated BCGitis usually require hospital admissions and multiple medications with high cost and low survival rate ranging between 0% to 65% worldwide. Our center; KAMCWR, Jeddah Saudi Arabia, has 83% survival rate of treating patients with disseminated BCGitis, but with using cytokine therapy and aminoglycoside drug in addition to common antiTB drugs.