BIOSCIENCES BIOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH ASIA, June 2021. Vol. 18(2), p. 367-372 Published by Oriental Scientific Publishing Company © 2021 This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY). *Corresponding author E-mail: israrjnmch@gmail.com Tracing the Children in Contact of Sputum Smear Negative Adults is the Need of the Hour to Achieve WHO “Stop TB Strategy” Diwan Israr Khan, Samreen Khan, M Anas and Abiha A Khan Ajmal Khan Tibbiya College Hospital, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India. http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/2923 (Received: 05 January 2021; accepted: 14 June 2021) Tuberculosis has been a public health issue affecting a large number of population world wide. 1According to 2019 report, approximately 10 million of people fell ill by the disease around the globe. A considerable proportion of TB affected cases is constituted by paediatric patients solely. The WHO estimates that about 1 million children endure the disease each year of which a significant figure harbours the latent form of infection. Since, the accurate diagnostic test to confirm the tuberculosis in children has not been unrolled, a positive history of contact is regarded as the foremost feature for authenticating the diagnosis in children. A large proportion of children with tuberculosis lives under the same roof with sputum smear positive adults, tracing out the childhood TB cases in sputum smear negative contacts is equally important and needs to be diagnosed timely. This category of children left undiagnosed acts as a pool for further transmission of the disease from where new TB cases arise. Therefore, the early diagnosis of children of this group is the need of the hour and a challenge to “STOP TB Strategy”. Keywords: Adult; Contact; Tuberculosis; Tracing; Sputum negative. Tuberculosis has tormented humanity since beginning and 2 contributes to be one of the top ten infectious causes of deaths worldwide 3 competing with HIV. 4 Tuberculosis puts to end the life of about 2 million people every year and is 1 considered to be the commonest cause of morbidity from a single infectious pathogen. 2,5 According to the most recent survey done in 2018, the estimated deaths of tuberculosis are 1.2 million in HIV negative patients and 251000 in HIV positives. 6 As per WHO statistics 2011, India has the highest load of tuberculosis with incidence magnitude of 2.2 million cases out of a global incidence of 9.6 million. 7 Tuberculosis afects all geographical regions and all age groups, a considerable fraction of which is constituted by paediatric population. 2 In 2018, tuberculosis infuenced about 1.1 million children globally with deaths of approximately 205000 children with HIV. Thus the afiction of the children living with tuberculous adults particularly those with positive sputum smear is the afair to be looked for. However, the number of infected and diseased children living with sputum smear negative contacts is not negligible. 4 This becomes more evident at young age (<3 years) with low socio- economic background and severe malnutrition.