Kampanart Chaychoowong
Sirindhorn College of Public Health, Thailland
Title: Life experiences of pulmonary tuberculosis patients affected by delays in treatment, Thailand
Biography
Biography: Kampanart Chaychoowong
Abstract
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium Tuberculosis complex.Although there are many awareness-raising and prevention campaigns, it remains a major global health problem. It has been long recognised that delayed presentation, diagnosis and treatment leads to increased levels transmission and mortality. A qualitative research aimed to describe life experiences affected by delays in treatment among 25 pulmonary tuberculosis patients who were treated at the tuberculosis clinic under the Nakhon Ratchasima Provincial Public Health Office, Thailand, from October 1 - December 30, 2018. The data were collected by in-depth interview, then analysed by the Content analysis, and managed with the NVivo version 12. The findings showed that there were 2 major consequences of delays in treatment. The patient-related consequences, patients claimed that they had severe symptoms before getting treatment which affected their daily-life involving stopping or leaving from their job. Eventually, they predicted that they might have the worst symptoms or die. Moreover, the community-related consequences, they had opinions that they could spread TB to others in their family, community, or society. However, some patients felt that they could not spread TB germs to others. In conclude, these findings lead to an improvement of the controlling TB strategies in order to exchange of knowledge and experience of TB patients regarding life experiences affected by delays with promoting and encouraging people to have correct knowledge, understanding, and awareness about tuberculosis which will help to reduce the severity of the disease, mortality rate, transmission rate in the community.