A survey of knowledge and attitude in medication controls of Tuberculosis patients referring to Zahedan anti TB centers in 1999

Tuberculosis is still known as the most fatal disease of man caused by a single microbe. According to the report of world Health Organization, contamination of about half of the population of the world by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and nine million cases of tuberculosis annually as well as appearance of the resistant forms of tuberculosis has made it one of the health difficulties in the world. Treatment is the most important factor to prevent its spread; and the most important reason for inefficiency of the treatment is the irregular taking of medicines or in other words noncompliance on the part of the patient. This study was carried out to assess the knowledge and attitude of the patients who are infected with pulmonary tuberculosis and referred to the antituberculosis centers in zahedan toward pulmonary tuberculosis and compliance with the prescribed treatment regimen. The sample size at the time of data collection included all the patients (113 people). A questionnaire and a researcher observation checklist was used for data collection. The checklist included four parts containing question about demographic characteristics, disease, medical treatment; knowledge; attitude; and compliance. The results showed that the patients scored 47% of knowledge and 77% of attitude marks. In the case of other aspects of compliance with treatment regimen like proper taking of the medicine, consistency to treatment, sanitary repelling of the sputum they scored 34.5%, 27.5% and 20.3% of the marks respectively. Also educated, urban, Iranian nationality and trained patients scored meaningfully better marks in knowledge and attitude questions. Furthermore the urban and trained patients had a meaningfully better compliance with the treatment regimen; and higher knowledge resulted in better attitude and compliance.