Pediatric Tuberculosis: A study of the socio-demographic profile of the patients

Abstract

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is considered to be one of the top ten causes of mortality in children. Of the nine million annual tuberculosis cases, about one million (11%) occur in children (under 15 years of age). Childhood tuberculosis is a neglected aspect of the tuberculosis epidemic. It infects one third of the world’s population at any point of time. Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of tuberculosis, which is often difficult to diagnose and therefore difficult to treat effectively. Pediatric TB results from failure of TB control in adults. Aim: The aim of the study was to study socio demographic profile of pediatric tuberculosis patients. Methods: This was a cross sectional observational, descriptive epidemiological study. The study was conducted among 148 pediatric TB patients who were currently under treatment at Hospital. A predesigned, pretested and semi-structured questionnaire was used to interview caregivers of pediatric TB patients and they were followed up at two more occasions and socio demographic information was collected. The collected data was analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS 17 Trial version). Results: Out of 148 pediatric patients 85 (57.4%) were male. Age range of the children was 1 to 14 years. In our study mean age of children was 8.41±2.86 years. 67 (45.2%) patients were adolescents. 125 (84.4%) patients were from rural area. 62 (41.8%) heads of the family of patients were illiterate. 114 (77.02%) of the patients lived in joint family. 88 (59.4%) patients had kuccha house. Overcrowding was present in 87.8% of the patients. Family history of TB was present in only 22.9 % of the patients. 77.7% of the patients belonged to social IV and V according to modified Prasad’s classification. 103 (69.5%) patients had extra pulmonary TB. Category-1 constituted 123 (83.1%) cases. 3 % patients had HIV infection. Conclusions: Apart from pharmacological treatment, poor housing condition and illiteracy of the parents of these patients need to be addressed.