The prevalence of tuberculosis among prisoners in Ethiopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies

BACKGROUND: Except individual studies with varying prevalence rates, there are no national prevalence studies conducted in prison settings in Ethiopia. Appropriate estimates of the disease is essential to formulate health service plans most fitted for prisoners. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis was designed to pool the results of individual studies and estimate the prevalence of tuberculosis among prisoners in Ethiopia. METHODS: MEDLINE/PubMed, Cochran library, and Google scholar databases were searched for potential studies on the prevalence of tuberculosis among prisoners in Ethiopia. A total of 177 titles were identified and 10 studies met the inclusion criteria. Descriptive and quantitative data of the included studies were presented in tables and forest plots. Potential sources of heterogeneity across studies were assessed using the Cochrane’s Q and I(2) tests. The MetaXL (version 5.3) was employed to compute the pooled prevalence of TB using the random effect model and 95% confidence interval. RESULT: Based on the ten studies included in the meta-analysis, about 4086 prisoners were infected with tuberculosis (TB). The pooled prevalence of TB among prisoners was therefore 8.33% (95% CI; 6.28%–10.63%) and the pooled point prevalence was estimated at 888 per 100,000 prison population (95% CI; 531–1333). The prevalence of TB using microscopy alone was 6.59% (95% CI: 3.96–9.50%) whereas the prevalence of TB when microscopy is combined with either culture or molecular tests was 8.57% (95% CI: 4.94–12.6%). CONCLUSION: The pooled prevalence of tuberculosis among prisoners in Ethiopia is expectedly high. This high prevalence could explain the spread of TB within prisons and between prisoners and varies communities. Thus; attention should be given to prison settings to prevent the transmission and emergence of drug resistance TB both in inmates and general population. Further studies covering large scale prison population are needed to design effective diagnostic, treatment and preventive methods. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13690-017-0204-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.