Mir Azam Khan, Arshad Javiad, Anila Basit, Muhammad Atta-ur raham Adnan, Fahad Ahmad, Noman Khan, Afaq Khattak, Hassan Sajjad.
Community Based Management of Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the Population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Pak J Chest Med Jan ;21(4):134-8.

Objectives:To assess the community mechanisms for treatment supervision, patient and treatment supporter education about MDR-TB Methodology: All eligible MDR-TB patients enrolled at the study site from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2012, and their treatment supporters included in the study. A self developed validated and reliable questionnaire in Pashto was used as a tool for evaluating the community mechanism for treatment supervision and patient's education about MDR-TB. Results: Total 200 patients and treatment supporters included in the study. The majority patients were females (62.5%), aged 31-60 years (55%), married (53%) and living in mud houses (64%), whereas the majority treatment supporters were males (76%) and aged 31-60 years (55%). Only 5% treatment supporter recorded their treatment. Side effects to the drugs were experienced by 43% patients, out of them only 67.7% informed their treatment supporter about the drugs side effects, and 91.67% were helped by informing the doctor. All treatment supporters kept record of the medicine intake by their patients, 89%) knew the type of TB their patients were suffering, 88% were personally supervising the intake of drugs to their patient, 63.6% said they do it twice a day and 57.5% responded correctly when asked about the dosage/number of drugs. Conclusion: Gaps identified in treatment supervision need to be filled through systemic inputs in line with local context with special focus on identifying and enrolling educated treatment supporters. There is a need to standardize the treatment support process by developing a training curriculum and training the supporters.

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