ASSESSMENT ON COMMUNITY-BASED HEALTH EXTENSION PROGRAMME INTERVENTIONS IN UPTAKING AND ADHERING TO TUBERCULOSIS TREATMENT AMONG PATIENTS IN HAWASSA CITY, SOUTH ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The Health Extension Program (HE) is a defined package of basic and essential promotive, preventive and selected high impact curative health services targeting households. Evidence suggests that one of the main strategies to control tuberculosis (TB) is to find and treat people with active disease. Unfortunately, the case detection rates remain low in many countries. Thus, interventions to find and treat sufficient number of patients and then to control TB is needed. The study generally aimed at assessing the extent of contributions made by involving Health Extension Worker towards TB treatment uptake and adherence of patients to TB treatment in Hawassa City and Tula Sub-City.The study was used both quantitative and qualitative research designs. The sample size comprised of 60 respondents; of these who were the potential clients in the HEP, who were the participants in focus group discussions (FGDs). The quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS software and Ms Excel. The researcher used manual thematic qualitative data analysis technique using descriptive narration. In this study, the engagement of community-based implementation of TB treatment by involving health extension workers improved the CDR and TB treatment uptake as well as adherence which was found to be about (100.0%; their contributions towards identification of TB suspect cases and referral to health centers for diagnosing and evaluation was greater than 80.0% to support and motivate TB patients to adhere to their anti-TB treatment throughout the treatment course and 92.0% Directly Observed Treatment or implementing DOT with the health extension workers; while the other, 8.0% of them used DOTS with the help of TB treatment supporters. In conclusion, involving HEWs in TB control has improved the CDR and the TSR for smear-positive patient, particularly females. It could be used as an option to improve the trend in low CDR and to provide patient-centered services in high-burden countries, like Ethiopia. However, the costeffectiveness of enhanced case finding and treatment outcome needs further study. Ix