Background: Tuberculosis (TB) was proclaimed a worldwide public health emergency since
1993, by WHO (World Health Organization). Since then, the WHO has set as target a treatment
success rate of 85% for all newly detected smear positive cases and a detection rate of 70%.
Monitoring the impact of the disease in populations and developing strategies to combat the
disease is a vital public health measure. Yet there is little information about treatment outcome
in patients treated under routine TB program conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in
Cameroon.
Objectives: The main objective of this study is to describe the outcome of tuberculosis
treatment and factors associated with treatment success in the six approved CBCHB TB
treatment centers in Cameroon.
Methods and Material: This descriptive cross sectional hospital-based study investigated all
patients’ TB cards from 2007-2009, who had been treated or were being treated for the disease.
Information needed to determine the treatment outcome of each patient was identified from the
TB patients’ cards. A total of 3522 patient cards were studied, the data were put into Excel and
analyzed using Stata.
Results: The study showed that BBH (Banso Baptist Hospital) had the best treatment outcome
(75.7%). Patients who died, had treatment failure and patients who defaulted were the main
reasons for reduced treatment success. Generally, it was associated with better treatment
outcome to know your HIV status while being treated for TB and even better treatment
outcome to be HIV negative while on treatment for TB, adjusted OR, OR3
: 2.50(1.87-3.35)
p:0.00.
Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that patients who died, treatment failures and defaulters
were the main reason why we don’t archive the 85% target treatment success set by the WHO.
The youngest age group (0-14years), females, new patients and HIV negative TB patients, had
higher proportions of treatment outcome. HIV negative TB patients were found to be
significantly associated with better treatment outcome.