Tuberculosis patients' reasons for defaulting tuberculosis treatment: a need for a practical patient-centred approach to tuberculosis management in Primary Health Care.

Idongesit Sunday Ukpe

Tuberculosis patients' reasons for defaulting tuberculosis treatment: a need for a practical patient-centred approach to tuberculosis management in Primary Health Care.

Idongesit Sunday Ukpe University of Pretoriaand Department of Health, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa.

Keywords: Tuberculosis, Treatment default, PHC

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) treatment default is one of the major barriers to effective TB control and poses serious challenge to TB control programmes. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended targets for TB control programmes are to achieve a case detection rate of 70% and treatment success rate of 85%. Nine of the world’s 22 TB high-burden countries are in the African region and treatment success rate in the region is said to remain more or less unchanged since 1998 at around 70%, considerably short of the 85% target 2. Treatment default is one of the factors blamed for the low treatment success rate in the region.

Author Biography

Idongesit Sunday Ukpe, University of Pretoriaand Department of Health, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa.

MB.BCh, DTM&H, M.Med (Fam.Med), FACTM Senior Specialist - Department of Family Medicine

Published

2007-07-04

Issue

Vol 49, No 6 - July 2007

Section

Scientific letters

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