Prevalence, knowledge and risk factors towards presumptive pulmonary tuberculosis among patients in Art clinic at Alive Medical Services in Namuwongo, Uganda

Abstract

Background: Tuberculosis remains an important public health concern and constitutes the leading cause of death from a single infectious disease agent and according to world health organization estimates in 2018 and Alive medical services where the research was done was not exceptional Objective: The main aim was to determine the prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis among presumptive cases in ART clinic. Methodology: A cross-sectional study design was carried out and the respondents were sampled randomly and data was collected using questionnaire to get the level of knowledge and risk factors and gene expert machine was used to determine positive or negative results of respondents and the collected data was analyzed using STATA software version 14.2. Results: The prevalence was found to be 18% among the respondents and according to the bivariate analysis it revealed significant associations between presumptive pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) and several risk factors. Specifically, smoking (p = 0.021), alcohol consumption (p = 0.040), contact with a TB patient (p < 0.001), and CD4 count below 200 cells (p < 0.001) were significantly associated with PTB. Participants who smoked, consumed alcohol, had contact with a TB patient, or had a low CD4 count were more likely to be PTB-positive and with multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that alcohol consumption (AOR = 3.15, p = 0.001, 95% CI: 1.59-6.21), contact with TB patients (AOR = 5.50, p = 0.002, 95% CI: 1.86-16.29), and CD4 count below 200 cells (AOR = 2.54, p = 0.021) were significantly associated with PTB after adjusting for other variables in the model. Smoking was not a significant predictor (AOR = 1.02, p = 0.967, 95% CI: 0.35-2.93). conclusion: The study found that the prevalence of presumptive pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) among HIV-infected individuals attending ART clinic was 17.91%, there was also revealed that there was a high level of awareness about TB though there were knowledge gaps and misconceptions existed, with only 73.5% of participants demonstrating good knowledge of TB. Furthermore, the study identified alcohol consumption, contact with TB patients, and CD4 count below 200 cells as significant risk factors for PTB.