Smear Positive Pulmonary Tuberculosis (PTB) Prevalence Amongst Patients at Agaro Teaching Health Center, South West Ethiopia

Background: World Health organization (WHO) declared tuberculosis as a global emergency because it poses a serious public health threat in different countries especially, in Africa. According to WHO report of 2007, Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS) coverage in Ethiopia reached 95 percent of the population; despite this fact the trend of tuberculosis in most of the districts of Ethiopia is not known. Hence, this study has revealed the trend and determined the overall prevalence of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis in five years (2005/6-2009/10) in Agaro teaching health center, south west Ethiopia. Methods: A retrospective study based on record review was conducted at Agaro Teaching Health center on sputum examination record of patient’s from 2005/6-2009/10(five years). Socio demographic data and sputum laboratory results were collected using pre-designed questionnaire and the data was entered into a computer using SPSS version 16 for windows. Finally, cross tab analysis and Chi-square was calculated at P-value less than 0.05 to check possible association between socio-demographic variables and smear positivity. Results: The overall five years prevalence of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis was found out to be 10.9%. On the other hand, the percentage of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis cases showed gradual decrease from 19.5% in 2005/6 to 5.8% cases in 2009/10. Conclusion: Tuberculosis is still the major problem of Agaro health center catchment area even though there is a decrease in trend from year to year. Hence, the respective health bureau and other stake holders should still need to strengthen their effort to control it.