South Africa is one of the high burden countries for TB in Sub Sahara in Africa with Mpumalanga as one of the provinces with a high burden of disease. Data available on tuberculosis in Msukaligwa indicate the following: Cure Rate 40%; Smear conversion at the end of intensive phase 35% and Defaulter Rate 27.5%.
The problem of TB is made worse by the twin epidemic of HIV, with a prevalence of 38.9% in our district -the highest among the 3 districts in the province. Retreatment TB carries the risk of developing TB drug resistance with severe consequences for the patient and the population. Understanding the characteristics of these patients will help in designing interventions to prevent the problem, promote a high cure rate for patients with TB in our health care system and reduce to minimum the burden of re-treatment pulmonary TB on our health care facilities and community. One critical precondition for Retreatment TB is non adherence to TB treatment. Factors responsible for non adherence could be classified as individual patient factors; Co-morbid conditions; Health system; treatment related and Community factors. The outcomes of Retreatment TB could be, cure, and death and failure of treatment leading to drug resistance.
The Setting of this study is the 58-bedded TB hospital in Ermelo. The Aim of the study was to describe the occurrence, characteristics and management outcome of Retreatment Pulmonary Tuberculosis in patients in the Ermelo TB hospital. The specific Objectives were to describe the socio-demographic, behavioural and clinical factors related to recurrence of the TB in patients; to determine the contribution of non adherence to treatment on recurrence of TB in the study population; to identify the prevalence of resistance to TB medication among patients with Retreatment TB ; to identify treatment outcomes in patients who have been followed up for the duration of Retreatment TB and finally to make recommendations to the Department of Health, Mpumalanga towards minimizing Retreatment TB and improving the overall TB programme.
The Study design is cross sectional and descriptive; the study population comprised of patients admitted with TB at Ermelo TB hospital aged 15 years and older between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2007.No specific probability sampling was applied in the selection of the patients. Data Collection involved visits to the TB hospital during the period and extracting the relevant information from the patient medical records and the TB register using a predesigned data collection form. Data analysis was done by the statistician from the Centre for Statistical Consultation, University of Stellenbosch. Being a descriptive study, the data analysis expresses the prevalence of various factors associated with retreatment TB. This study met the Ethical approval of the University of Stellenbosch as well as the Research Ethics Committee of the Department of Health & Social Services, Mpumalanga.
Findings
All the three hundred and eighty eight patient records with retreatment TB forming 19.6% of TB patients admitted between 2005 and 2007 were reviewed. The distributions of the patients were: males 66%; mean age of 41.4 years; females 34%; mean age 35.3 years. They were mostly unemployed; primary education 93%; unmarried 43% and married 34%.Retreatment TB was diagnosed with sputum smear microscopy in 71% with bacilli load of 3+ in 45%.The sources of referral to TB hospital were: public hospital 71 %; private doctors 2%. 74% of the patients have had TB 1-3 years before the episode under study. Retreatment TB categories were: after treatment completed 69%; default 19%; after cure 8% and treatment failure 4%. 98% of patients tested had +ve HIV status; the median CD4 cell count was 106 cells/µl at the time of retreatment; very few (5%) were on ART. Drug resistance to primary TB drugs was as follows: Rifampicin 16%; Isoniazid 29%; Ethambutol 19% and Streptomycin 23%. The treatment outcomes for those whom data were available were: successful 49.1%, death 23.8%; treatment default 22.9%. MDR-TB complicated 3.3% of the patients.
Conclusion: Majority of the retreatment TB patients were males with an average age of 41years and unemployed. More than two thirds of the patient had completed TB treatment previously and default on treatment accounted for less than one quarter of retreatment categories. The process of care was better in terms of diagnosis of TB with sputum smear. Improvement in the documentation of key factors like smoking, alcohol, drug use among patients and co-morbidity as well as counselling and testing for HIV and provision of ARTs is required. Treatment outcomes with regards to successful outcome need to be monitored and improved upon.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/97199 |
| Date | 22 July 2015 |
| Creators | Akpabio, Ubon S. |
| Contributors | De Villiers, Pierre J. T., University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Health Sciences. Dept. of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Stellenbosch |
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