Assessment of factors causing treatment delay among newly diagnosed smear positive pulmonary TB patients seeking care from RNTCP: cross sectional study

Background: Tuberculosis is among the top ten causes of global mortality. Among infectious disease, according to global tuberculosis report by WHO 2014, 9.0 million people develop TB and 1.5 million died from the disease. Objectives: To determine the factors causing delay in treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis patients. Material and Method: A cross sectional study was conducted among new smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients seeking treatment of DOTS under RNTCP at civil hospital Belagavi district. Purposive sampling was used to get 110 patients. A predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used to collect data on Socio-economic and demographic particulars, health seeking behavior after obtaining informed consent. Data was entered through SPSS version 16 and frequency, percentage and chi square test were calculated. Results: A total of 110 patients were enrolled in the study where mean age was found 40.81 yrs, majority of males 19(17.3%) were laborers whereas females 20(18.4%) were housewives. Among the participants 36(32.7%) were illiterates, 81(73.6%) were married and 27 (24.5%) were unmarried. 89(80.9%) participants lived in urban area and 73(66.4%) were living with >6 members in a family. Factors like self medication, use of traditional healers and alcohol use caused patients delay more than 30 days. Health System Delay for > 7 days was strongly associated with Self medication and use of traditional healers. Majority of the patients 49(44.5%) said being too busy was their reasons for not visiting health care providers (HCP). Conclusion: Self medication, use of traditional healers and alcohol use were factors associated with patients and health system delays.