STUDY OF THE STATUS OF TUBERCULOSIS CONTROL PROGRAM BASED ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DIRECTLY OBSERVED TREATMENT SHORT-COURSE STRATEGY (DOTS)

INTRODUCTION: Ascendant trend of tuberculosis in the world introduces this disease to be one of the most important infectious diseases in the world. So that every year, 9 million people are afflicted to active TB and about 5.1 million people die of the disease. As the HIV contaminated cases are increased, emergence and spread field of Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) bacilli has been provided. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the Tuberculosis Control Program from 2005 to 2012 to determine the overall situation of disease epidemiology and prioritized strategies in disease control program within the south of Tehran. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study was extracted and analyzed retrospectively on the basis of records of all TB patients in TB health center and TB software in south Tehran in 2005-2012 years. RESULTS: From the total population under protection of health center of south Tehran, 99% are urban and 1% are rural. During 2005-2012, 1242 TB cases have been registered and they were treated by DOTS method. There were 553 cases of new smear-positive pulmonary TB (44%), 222 cases of smear-negative pulmonary TB (18%) and 336 cases of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis (27%), 26 cases of recurrence (2%) and 11 cases of MDR (0.9%). Smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis has included 67.4% of all tuberculosis patients. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that, in accordance with TB worldwide statistics, at the health center of south Tehran, pulmonary TB is the most common form of the disease (67.4%). The incidence of smear-positive tuberculosis and all forms of TB cases has been an ascending trend over the period between 2005 and 2012.