Abstract:
BACKGROUND: World Health organization (WHO) declared tuberculosis as a global emergency
because it poses a serious public health threat in different countries especially, in Africa. According to
WHO report of 2007, Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS) coverage in Ethiopia reached
95 percent of the population; despite this fact the trend of tuberculosis in most of the districts of Ethiopia
is not known. Hence, this study has revealed the trend and determined the overall prevalence of smear
positive pulmonary tuberculosis in five years (2005/6-2009/10) in Agaro teaching health center, south
west Ethiopia.
METHODS: A retrospective study based on record review was conducted at Agaro Teaching Health
center on sputum examination record of patient’s from 2005/6-2009/10(five years). Socio demographic
data and sputum laboratory results were collected using pre-designed questionnaire and the data was
entered into a computer using SPSS version 16 for windows. Finally, cross tab analysis and Chi-square
was calculated at P-value less than 0.05 to check possible association between socio-demographic
variables and smear positivity.
RESULTS: The overall five years prevalence of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis was found out to
be 10.9%. On the other hand, the percentage of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis cases showed
gradual decrease from 19.5% in 2005/6 to 5.8% cases in 2009/10.
CONCLUSION: Tuberculosis is still the major problem of Agaro health center catchment area even
though there is a decrease in trend from year to year. Hence, the respective health bureau and other
stake holders should still need to strengthen their effort to control it.
