COMMUNITY BASED MANAGEMENT OF MULTI DRUG RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS (MDR-TB) IN THE POPULATION OF KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

Abstract

Objectives:To assess the community mechanisms for treatment supervision,patient and treatment supporter education about MDR-TBMethodology: All eligible MDR-TB patients enrolled at the study site from 1January 2012 to 31 December 2012, and their treatment supporters included inthe study. A self developed validated and reliable questionnaire in Pashto wasused as a tool for evaluating the community mechanism for treatment supervision and patient's education about MDR-TB.Results: Total 200 patients and treatment supporters included in the study.The majority patients were females (62.5%), aged 31-60 years (55%), married(53%) and living in mud houses (64%), whereas the majority treatment supporters were males (76%) and aged 31-60 years (55%). Only 5% treatment supporter recorded their treatment. Side effects to the drugs were experienced by 43% patients, out of them only 67.7% informed their treatment supporter about the drugs side effects, and 91.67% were helped by informing the doctor. All treatment supporters kept record of the medicine intake by their patients, 89%) knew the type of TB their patients were suffering, 88% were personally supervising the intake of drugs to their patient, 63.6% said they do it twice a day and 57.5% responded correctly when asked about the dosage/number of drugs.Conclusion: Gaps identified in treatment supervision need to be filled throughsystemic inputs in line with local context with special focus on identifying andenrolling educated treatment supporters. There is a need to standardize thetreatment support process by developing a training curriculum and training thesupporters.