A Retrospective Study to Determine the Prevalence and Outcome of Tuberculosis among Patients Who Visited the TB Annex Hospital in Congo Town, Monrovia, Liberia from July 2009 to July 2010

This study was conducted at the TB Annex Hospital in Monrovia; the capital city for Liberia. The Annex is the only public health center build currently to treat TB and its related complications. The major aim of this paper was to determine the rate of sputum positive cases among those who visited the TB Annex Hospital from July 2009 to July 2010 and factors (age, gender, education, time and season) associated with this probability. Additionally, it was meant to find the rate of treatment compliance and various factors also associated with its probability. A cross-sectional descriptive study design was used and all the 299 patients who visited the Center to seek health care’s hospital charts were thoroughly reviewed. Results showed in Figure 1 that the prevalence of TB was very high among those who visited the TB Annex Hospital. The Exact Binomial Test was used with p<0.05 and CI (0.864 – 0.934).Accordingly, the monthly incidence of the disease remains very high ranging from 75% to 100% respectively. Amazingly, in January 2010 alone, all 42 patients who visited the Annex were sputum positive. During the period under study according to Table 1 and looking at the sputum screening test by age distribution as a variable, the various age range were set at 0-6,7-12,13-18,19-24, 25-30and 31years and above respectively. Accordingly, the latter recorded the highest number of patients 126 out of 299 yet with p>0.05.Out of the 299 patients, 172 was males with 127 females. For their educational level, its corresponding p is < 0.05 indicating that the disease was distributed based on their level of education. The dry season recorded 133 patients out of which 124 were sputum positive cases. According to Table 2, age group 31 and above completed their TB treatment(66.09%) and the rest closely dispersed but p>0.05. For gender, the females did extremely well (80.18%) in complying with treatment than their male counterparts p<0.05. There was no difference seen with regards to the distribution of the disease by season as a factor.