Association of socio-demographic characteristics with knowledge and perception about disease among newly diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis patients in western Utter Pradesh: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: TB is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. The risk of TB is high among populations living in poverty, low socioeconomic groups, low income, immune-suppressed (including AIDS), and extreme age (old age and children) groups, etc. Methods: The study was conducted in TB and chest department of Sarojini Naidu medical college Agra city. The total number of patients registered during the period of July to September 2017 was 518; out of these 288 were new pulmonary and extrapulmonary patients. Out of 288 subjects, 123 were pulmonary patients. All the 123 new pulmonary tuberculosis patients (both smear +ve and smear -ve) were included in the study. 18 patients were loss to follow up after registration thus final effective sample size was 105 for further follow-up study. Results: Overwhelming (84.76%) patients belonged to a lower socioeconomic class. The maximum number (85.33%) of the study subjects among upper lower socioeconomic status had no knowledge regarding causative microbes of the disease (p=0.001). Conclusions: The majority of patients belong to illiterate, lower socioeconomic group, married and other than general cast, living in a joint, overcrowded family with more than four family members. About half of the subjects not knowing the method of prevention & consequence of treatment interruption. Most of them felt that quality of life affected after disease and about 1/4th of them felt hurtful behaviour of family members.