Prevalence of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis in Gondar prisoners, North West Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Objective:To assess the prevalence and risk factors of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis amongGondar town prisoners,NorthWestEthiopia.Methods:A cross sectional study was conducted fromFebruary toJuly,2008 inGondarPrison.Prisoners with cough duration of more than two weeks were involved in the study by giving three sputum samples and filling the questionnaires prepared for risk factor assessment.Acid fast staining technique was employed to detect the presence of theMycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli in the sputum samples.Data was analyzed usingSPSS version13 computer software and presented in table.Chi-square test was used to assess associations and aP-value less than0.05 was taken as significant.Results:A total of384 prisoners,349 male and35 females, with a mean age of33.3 years were involved in the study.The prevalence of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis among those prisoners with cough duration of more than two weeks was8.59%.Only the length of imprisonment had a significant association(χ2=18.82,P-value<0.0001) with the prevalence of tuberculosis. Conclusions:This study indicated that tuberculosis among prisoners with cough duration of more than two weeks inGondar prison is very high.ThereforePeriodic screening of the prisoners and screening of newly introduced prisoners should be practiced so as to minimize the burden of tuberculosis in prisoners.