Article

Factors Affecting Treatment Outcomes Of Drug Resistance Tuberculosis Among Patients On Therapy At Lira Regional Referral Hospital In Lira District, Northern Uganda

Abstract

Drug-resistance tuberculosis (DR-TB) remains a big challenge with Multi-drug resistance tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensive drug-resistance tuberculosis (XDR-TB) being the worst forms. The burden DR-TB in Africa is very high and the World Health Organization estimated that about 36000 to 44000 cases occurred in the Africa region but the actual cases could be more than the estimates due to lack of diagnostic equipment’s, technical skills and knowledge in detection of DR-TB. This study presents findings in Lira regional referral hospital which is one of the hospitals serving Northern part of Uganda. The study investigated factors associated with treatment outcomes of Drug-resistance tuberculosis (DR-TB) among patients on therapy at Lira regional referral hospital in Northern Uganda. The study explored a descriptive cross-sectional design with quantitative data collection method to gather data. Data was cleaned, analyzed using spss version 20 and factors affecting treatment outcome was measured using chi-square test at 95% Confident interval, factors with P-value greater than 0.05 were considered significantly associated with treatment outcomes. The study found out than male 38 (97.2%) were more than female 10 (20.2%), Catholics 26(54.2%) and Protestants 20 (41.7%) dominated the study population. In individual factors affecting treatment outcomes were Alcohol consumption, Smoking (p-value 0.033), Lack of family support (p-value 0.034), stigma and discrimination (p-value 0.041). Health system factors include distance to the health facility (p-value 0.001), shortages of drugs (p-value 0.048) drug refills (p-value 0.000) and monitoring of patients and adherence supports (p-value 0.005) were significantly associated with management and treatment outcomes of DR-TB. In conclusion, despites of efforts made by the government to control and prevent TB, Lira regional referral hospital still lack effective diagnostic equipment’s to easy identification of incidence cases.

Keywords: Drug resistance tuberculosis, Mono-resistance, poly-resistance, Rifampicin resistance, Adherence and treatment outcome.