Awareness and health seeking behavior among new sputum positive tuberculosis patients diagnosed under RNTCP at medical colleges of Puducherry

Murugan N; Ramesh Chand Chauhan; Johnson Cherian; Anil Jacob Purty; Zile Singh; Sherin Billy Abraham

Volume : V, Issue : VI, June - 2015

Awareness and health seeking behavior among new sputum positive tuberculosis patients diagnosed under RNTCP at medical colleges of Puducherry

Murugan N, Ramesh Chand Chauhan, Johnson Cherian, Anil Jacob Purty, Zile Singh, Sherin Billy Abraham

Abstract :

Tuberculosis patient moves from one health care provider to another before they are finally diagnosed and started on treatment. For delayed diagnosis of TB, one major reason is repeated visits at the same health care level. This community based descriptive study was done in four medical colleges of Puducherry. Using systematic random sampling, from a list of all adult new pulmonary sputum positive tuberculosis patients, 300 cases were selected. Using a pre–designed and pre–tested questionnaire the information on socio–demographic characteristics, major presenting symptoms, duration of symptoms was collected. Cough (76.9%), followed by fever (69.6%), weight loss (68.1%), chest pain (54.2%) and hemoptysis (11.6%) were common presenting symptoms. Private hospitals/ clinics (47.2%) were the most common health facilities first visited. Only 20.3% of the patients were correctly aware of the cause of disease and only 26.8% were aware of availability of free diagnosis services. Majority of the patients were aware that TB is diagnosed by sputum examination (83.3) and chest x–ray (80.5%). Knowledge about cause and treatment of tuberculosis among TB patients was quite good.