Tuberculosis treatment outcome: The case of women in Ethiopia and China, ten-years retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Every year tuberculosis kills above half million women all over the world. Nonetheless, the factor affecting TB treatment outcome of women was less frequently studied and compared among countries. Hence, this study was aimed to measure and compare outcome of treatment and the death size of these two countries. METHOD: Socio demographic and clinical data of women treated for all form of tuberculosis in the past ten years 2007–2016 were collected from total of eight hospitals and six treatment centers of Tigray and Zigong respectively. Then, we measured the magnitude of TB, level of treatment success and identify factors associated with the unsuccessful TB outcome. RESULT: In the past ten years, a total of 5603(41.5%) and 4527 (24.5%) tuberculosis cases were observed in Tigray and Zigong respectively. Of those with treatment outcome record a total of 2602(92%) in Tigray and 3916(96.7%) in Zigong were successfully treated. Total of 170 (6%) cases in Tigray and 36(0.8%) cases in Zigong were dead. In Tigray, retreatment cases (aOR, 0.29; 95% CI: 0.16–0.53) and MDR-TB cases (aOR, 0.31; 95% CI: 0.003, 0.27) were less likely to show treatment success. However,, HIV co-infected TB cases (aOR, 3.58; 95% CI: 2.47, 5.18) were more likely to show treatment success compared with unknown HIV status. In Zigong, women with MDR TB (aOR, 0.90; 95%CI: 0.24, 0.34) were less likely to show treatment success and women in the age category of 15–49 (aOR, 1.55; 95% CI: 1.08, 2.206) were more likely to show treatment success. CONCLUSION: Big number of tuberculosis cases and death were observed in Tigray comparing with Zigong. Hence, a relevant measure should be considered to improve treatment outcome of women in Tigray regional state.