A Study on Tuberculosis (TB) Co-Infection in New HIV Cases Visiting Art Clinic of Sukra Raj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital Teku, Kathmandu, Nepal

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS had aroused as a serious public health problems since their emergence. The social and ethical impact brought about by these diseases in the community among the patients had made them to be in disguise because of the stigmatization and other social discrimination. The occurrence of TB in the HIV positives and HIV in the TB patients is found to be further deteriorating the global status of TB and HIV. The HIV positive patients are 50% more likely to get TB as an Opportunistic Infection than the non-HIV people. In most of the HIV cases TB arises as the earliest manifestation. It is the most common Opportunistic Infection among the HIV positive people. The current study was conducted to study the prevalence of Tuberculosis (TB) among the new HIV positive cases visiting the ART clinic of Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Diseases Hospital, Teku. TB as the opportunistic infection was studied in 106 cases out of 390 HIV positive newly diagnosed cases which are 27.17 %. Among them were 80 males (75.47%) and 26 females (24.53%). The highest prevalence rate was found to be in the age group of 25-45 years with an average age of 35 years with 83.75%( 67) males and 16.25% (22). More precisely the age group of 30-35 years has the highest prevalence rate with 38.67%. The prevalence rate was found to be highest in Seasonal Migrant Labor (44.28 %), primary and below level of educational status (51.88%), Smokers (79.24%) and with present TB status (57.54%). The new research on this area and implementation of such policies that can be useful to both the vulnerable population and the government will save as it says “A stitch in time saves nine”.