Adherence and factors associated with adherence to Tuberculosis treatment among HIV patients accessing health care services at Mengo Hospital

Abstract

Background: TB is a highly contagious disease affecting a big number of people and is majorly caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The study had a purpose of assessing the adherence and factors associated with TB treatment among TB-HIV coinfected patients at Mengo hospital. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out to assess the adherence and factors associated with adherence to TB treatment among 80 randomly selected HIV positive patients at Mengo hospital in May 2023. Data was collected by use of a questionnaire and later on analysed Results: The findings were such that the rate of adherence to TB treatment was only 37.5%. The factors that negatively affected adherence to TB treatment among study participants were forgetfulness to take TB medication (62.5% vs 37.5%), being too busy or busy with work (90% vs 5.3%), stigma (77.8% vs 54.7%), alcohol consumption (73.1% vs 58.5%), age of 30 to 49 years, and male gender (66.7% vs 33.3%). Conclusion: The rate of adherence to TB treatment was found to be low and a number of factors deterred adherence to TB treatment like forgetfulness, being too busy with work among others. Recommendations: We recommend that the government of Uganda through its Ministries of Health and Local Government should continue sensitizing masses of people about TB being a curable disease which needs to be treated early enough to avoid complications. This will minimize the stigma associated with the disease among the community members. Mengo Hospital through its outreach programmes should strengthen support supervision and improve counselling in order to increase adherence and minimize forgetfulness and stigma associated with TB treatment. They should also health educate people about not taking alcohol in order to improve treatment adherence.