Awareness about tuberculosis and RNTCP services among rural people in Nalgonda district, Telangana

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis discovered in ancient centuries still remains a major public health problem in India. Lack of awareness about the cause, risk factors, treatment and prevention of TB among rural people is a major challenge to be addressed to reduce disease transmission. AIMS: To assess the knowledge of TB among rural people. To assess the awareness about RNTCP services. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: Cross-sectional study was conducted in six randomly selected villages attached to a medical college. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Houses were selected by systematic random sampling method and younger person was identified as study subject. Data were collected from a sample of 300 by predesigned pretested semi-structured questionnaire. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Data were presented in proportions with confidence interval and Chi-square test was applied to find the association between variables by using SPSS ver. 23. RESULTS: The study showed that 79.6% knew that the cause of TB is bacteria. Majority of the participants 93.6% (95% CI: 90.3, 96.1) knew that TB primarily affects lungs. Subjects were aware of free diagnostic services (85.3%), free treatment services (89%) available in the govt setup. CONCLUSIONS: Although the awareness of symptoms, causative agent, mode of spread was reasonably good, knowledge on availability of DOTS centres, services offered through RNTCP is still poor among rural population.