Awareness and perception regarding tuberculosis among patients and their relatives attending a tertiary care hospital in Uttarakhand: A hospital-based exploratory survey

BACKGROUND: Awareness about disease among tuberculosis (TB) patients plays a crucial role toward successfully achieving targets for control, prevention, and their relatives treatment adherence and is not well studied or documented. This study sought to explore the awareness and perceptions of TB patients in a tertiary care centre in northern India. METHODS: This was an exploratory study conducted between January and December 2016 among 1,000 pulmonary TB patients and their relatives. Structured and validated interview schedule was used to assess participants knowledge and perception regarding TB, which comprised of 41 questions. Ethical clearance was taken and written informed consent was obtained from each study participants. Data analysis was done using SPSS 22.0 version. RESULTS: A total of 1,000 study participants (mean age 40.2 ± 9.6 years, females 51%) were enrolled. More than two-third of the study participants were from Uttarakhand. Study participants had highest knowledge score (61.85%) regarding sign and symptoms, followed by scores in the aspect of prevention and treatment of TB (52.7%). However, a lower proportion (51.5%) knew about its causation. Overall knowledge score was 54.8%. Around half of the subjects (49.7%) disagreed that TB is a major health problem. CONCLUSIONS: Regardless of non-satisfactory knowledge of participants, their perception regarding TB was better. As to the associated factors, we found that participants' knowledge had significant association with religion, educational status, occupation, family income per month, type of family, and source of health information. Although there was insignificant difference between family monthly incomes, source of health information and perception regarding TB.