Study on Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Tuberculosis among Rural Population of Tamil Nadu

Background: Premature death is the main cause of the burden of TB, as measured in terms of DALYs lost. Besides the disease burden, TB also causes an enormous socio-economic burden to India. TB primarily affects people in their most productive years of life with important socio-economic consequences for the household and the disease is even more common among the poorest and marginalized sections of the community. Almost 70% of TB patients are aged between the ages 15 and 54 years of age. The prime cause for MDR-TB, and EXDR TB is failure to adherence to the treatment of DOTS. Poor adherence is due to insufficient knowledge, poor attitude, inadequate practices towards to tuberculosis and that leads to Treatment failure and default. So this study was planned to know about knowledge and attitude and practices in the study population.

Material and Method: A cross sectional study was carried out in Kancheepuram, a district belonging to the field practice area of RHTC-Chunampet, Department of Community Medicine. Systemic random sampling was used for selection of study population. 2005 adults were interviewed by using a pretested validated questionnaire. Data entry and analysis was done using SPSS 16.0.

Result: Total of 2005 respondents were interviewed out of which 1196(59.7%) were females and remaining 809 (40.35) were males. Maximum (35.3%) respondents belonged to the age group of 15-30 years followed by 31-35 years age group(28.7%). Only 4.9% (98) respondents knew that Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent and 13.4% (268) of the respondents knew smoking as a risk factor, 5% (100) knew that malnutrition and overcrowding as risk factor for Tuberculosis. More than half of the respondents 1092(54.5%) were aware that cough was the main symptom of tuberculosis and also they knew that fever(11.8%), loss of appetite(5%) and loss of weight(23%) as symptoms of Tuberculosis. About one fourth of the respondents knew that sputum examination is investigation of choice to diagnose TB. Majority (80%) of respondents agreed that BCG vaccination would protect against Tuberculosis. Two third of the study population knew that sputum examination is essential if cough persisted for more than two weeks. About 66% of the respondents felt that 6 months anti tuberculosis treatment was essential.

Conclusion: Inadequate knowledge about tuberculosis among study respondent Hence proper IEC &BCC was planned to increase knowledge of the community.