31Effect of Health Education on Knowledge of Tuberculosis among patent Medicine vendors in Enugu

Abstract

Abstract Background Tuberculosis remains a serious public health threat to people of all sexes and ages in Nigeria. Any intervention that could improve the knowledge of tuberculosis and treatment services is expected to improve case finding and ultimately the cure rates. The world health organization global Tuberculosis report, 2014 shows that Enugu recorded slight increase in all cases of Tuberculosis and reporting remains low. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of a health education intervention on knowledge and management of tuberculosis among patent medicine vendors in Enugu Methods This is an educational interventional study carried out among 400 patent medicine vendors in Enugu. The baseline data on knowledge and management practice was determined using an interviewer-administered semi-structured. Results we found out that level of education was significantly associated with TB-related knowledge and management. The baseline study shows that the patent medicine vendors (PMVs) have poor knowledge of Tuberculosis prior to this study. This agreed to the preliminary investigation which shows that they contribute 65.6% to increase in multi-drug resistant TB, poor case finding /reporting in Enugu. The post assessment results, shows increase in knowledge of tuberculosis and management of TB among the PMVs Conclusions The health education impacted significantly on the knowledge of the PMVs on Tuberculosis. Therefore, emphasis should be laid to more train and retrain the PMVs in toward improving TB case detection. Key messages Health education, Knowledge, tuberculosis, PMVs