KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE TOWARDS TUBERCULOSIS AMONG CLIENTS VISITING WORABE COMPREHENSIVE SPECIALIZED HOSPITAL INTERNAL MEDICINE OUTPATIENT DEPARTMENT, 2021

Abstract

Background: - Ethiopia remains to be one of the 30 countries with high burden of tuberculosis, Tuberculosis and Human immunodeficiency virus for 2021-2025 in the world. Lack of appropriate knowledge and attitude of peoples about TB affects the health seeking of patients and sustain the transmission of the disease, one of the bottlenecks in decreasing the disease burdens. Objectives: - to assess knowledge, attitude and practice towards TB among clients visiting worabe comprehensive specialized hospital medical outpatient department 2021 Methods: -Institutional based cross sectional study was conducted in Worabe comprehensive specialized hospital, worabe town among 172 randomly selected participants. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the data by a face-to-face interview October 2021.the collected data was checked daily for completeness and consistency then data were entered into SPSS version 20 for descriptive analysis Results: A total of 172 (83%) respondents have heard about TB, while (83.7%) respondents said cough as symptoms of tuberculosis. Only 9.3% of participants mentioned bacteria as the cause of the diseases and 77.3% considered that the transmission during TB patients coughs or sneeze. The majority (70.3%) of participants responded that its transmission is preventable and overall 42.5% had high overall knowledge about TB. 51.3% of the participants were having a favorable attitude towards tuberculosis. But only 38.4% had good practice in preventing tuberculosis. Conclusion: compared to many national and international studies, knowledge, attitude and practice towards tuberculosis was not satisfactory. Strengthening of awareness creation and health education program towards tuberculosis is needed