Elizabeth Kasoga, Precious Everine Apako, Ssempijja Stephen, Teddy Ajalo, Godfrey Stanley Rebecca Okungura, Paul Oboth, Jacob Komakech Iramiot, Philip Denis Nekaka
Background: Moroto is one of the hard-to-reach districts in Uganda that faces a lot of challenges in effecting the prevention of pulmonary tuberculosis. Despite the high prevalence of PTB in Moroto district, certain areas within the district have a much higher portion of the positive cases recorded when compared to the rest. There is need to identify the distribution pattern of the disease as well as its sociodemographic predictors if elimination of PTB should occur. The geographical information system has become the preferred method and technique for studying the epidemiological characteristics of infectious diseases as it allows for easier and more efficient acquisition, visualization, management, analysis and display of geographic data over other existing methods for disease clusters. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the socio- demographic predictors and distribution of pulmonary tuberculosis in Moroto so as to establish information useful a more effective strategy for TB prevention and control in Moroto in the future.
Methodology: A study to determine the distribution of PTB and its sociodemographic predictors was carried out by five second year medical and nursing students under community placement, in conjunction with various health care workers in three sub-counties of Moroto namely; Nadunget, Rupa and Northern division. Face-to-face interviews were done and translators mainly the village health teams were employed. Both gene expert and chest x-ray radiography were employed in attainment of results. For gene Xpert, morning sputum samples were collected in sputum containers, packaged in a cold chain preserved container and sent to Moroto Regional Referral Hospital laboratory for Gene Xpert test. To establish the distribution of PTB, geo-spatial mapping (UTM Geo map) was used to identify PTB hotspots with the aid of GIS technology.
Results: For a period of one month between March and April 2021, 386 individuals aged 5 and above participated in the study21.5% were able to produce sputum for which gene Xpert was carried out and the remaining 78.5% who were unable to produce sputum were examined using a mobile chest x-ray machine that provided instant results. A total of 26 were diagnosed with PTB including one rifampicin resistant case. The positive cases were initiated on treatment, to be followed up by the health workers.
Conclusion: Findings from our study indicate that 6.7% of the 386-sample population were positive giving a prevalence of 6735 per 100,000 of people aged greater or equal to 5 years with highest prevalence of 76.9% and 92.31% among the tobacco and alcohol consumers respectively.