Assessment on community-based health extension programme interventions in uptaking and adhering to tuberculosis treatment among patients in Hawassa city, South Ethiopia

Abstract

The Health Extension Program (HE) is a defined package of basic and essential promotive, preventive and selected high impact curative health services targeting households. Evidence suggests that one of the main strategies to control tuberculosis (TB) is to find and treat people with active disease. Unfortunately, the case detection rates remain low in many countries. Thus, interventions to find and treat sufficient number of patients and then to control TB is needed. The study generally aimed at assessing the extent of contributions made by involving Health Extension Worker towards TB treatment uptake and adherence of patients to TB treatment in Hawassa City and Tula Sub-City.The study was used both quantitative and qualitative research designs. The sample size comprised of 60 respondents; of these who were the potential clients in the HEP, who were the participants in focus group discussions (FGDs).