The Prevalence of Tuberculosis among Addis Ababa City Bus Drivers and Cash Collectors
Creators: name: Abseno, Mohammed
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2004

description: Tuberculosis control policies emphasize the importance of case finding and treatment, particularly of Smear-positive cases aiming at a cure rate of 85%. This is a Cross-sectional survey which was mainly aimed to estimate the magnitude of smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis among Addis Ababa City Bus drivers and cash collectors. The specific objectives were to determine the proportion of all forms of tuberculosis among the bus drivers and cash collectors; to determine the proportions of smear-negative and extra-pulmonary TB cases, relapses, defaulters, and treatment failures among all types of the identified TB cases; to determine the proportion of registered Smear-positive TB cases among all the identified cases; and to look for trends in the magnitude of tuberculosis over the years. A total of 903 [466 (51.6%) Addis Ababa City Bus drivers and 437 (48.4%) cash collectors] aged between 19 and 59 years (mean age = 35.6 years) were screened for tuberculosis. Six hundred and forty (70.9%) were males and 263(29.1%) females. The study took place starting from December 28/2003 to March 15/2004. A pretested standardized questionnaire was used to collect socio-demographic characteristics and clinical information. All the study participants had a full physical examination and laboratory tests (sputum smear for AFB, chest x-ray, and FNA) were ordered for all suspected TB cases as recommended by the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Guide line. EPI-INFO Version 6 and SPSS statistical packages were used for data entry and analysis. There were 12(1328/100,000) existing cases of tuberculosis and 4(442/100,000) newly diagnosed. The prevalence of Smear-positive pulmonary TB (PTB+) was 4/903(443/100,000) (P &gt;0.05). There was no significant difference with the proportion of smear-positive pulmonary TB cases in Wereda 16, Addis Ababa (189/100,000). The prevalence of all types of tuberculosis was 16/903(1772/100,000) (P&lt; 0.05) as compared with the prevalence of notified cases in Addis Ababa in 2003(372/100,000). The proportion of Smear-negative pulmonary TB (PTB-) cases among all types of tuberculosis was 8/16(50%) (P&gt;0.05) and the proportion of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) 3/16(18.8%) (P&gt; 0.05). In Addis Ababa the two proportions were 33.4% and 33.01% respectively. The proportion of relapse TB cases was 1/16(6.25%). There was no association between the prevalence of tuberculosis and the various socio-demographic characteristics. All the identified cases were registered in health institutions where there were DOTS program (P&lt;0.05). The trend of tuberculosis was analyzed starting from 1989 G.C. to 2003/04 G.C. There was no increasing or decreasing trend for all forms of tuberculosis, Chi-square test for trend for PTB+, PTB-, and EPTB were 1.86, 1.26, and 0.0635 respectively. Since our comparison group was not an appropriate one it was concluded that this study will help as a base line for future studies and it was recommended that further future studies will be required. Key words: Tuberculosis, Case finding, Smear-positive, Smear-negative, Extra-pulmonary, Relapse, Defaulters, Prevalence, DOTS, Trend, Ethiopia.