Abstract:

Background: Any delay in diagnosis and consequently treatment of TB patients not only increases the infectivity of the disease in the community, but may lead to more advance disease state, which may result in more complications and expose patients to higher risk of death. Objectives To assess delays in diagnosing new TB patients and the factors associated with these delays in NTBLTC Zaria, Nigeria. Methods: The study population was TB patients attending the NTBLTC, Zaria. Analysis of contingency tables was done and Chi-square statistics were used to test for association between variables and level of significance. Logistic regression was used to calculate the odd ratio. Results: Age, marital status, economic status, sex, education, and alcohol consumption were significantly (P<0.05) associated with patient delays while smoking and CD4 count were statistically not significant with patient delays. Female (OR=1.046; 1.04-2.17), literacy (OR=1.02; 0.29-1.98) and single (OR=1.00; 0.14-4.67) were the major determinants that influence extended patient delay. Age, economic status, education, smoking and alcohol consumption were significantly (P<0.05) associated with health system delays while sex, marital status and CD4 count were statistically not significant with health system delays. Conclusion: Factors associated with delay in seeking health care for more than 30 days included age, sex, marital status, economic status, education, smoking and alcohol intake while for patient delay includes age, sex, marital status, economic status, education and alcohol intake. This factor should be taken into consideration for policy planning to help the containment of the spread of the disease.

Keywords: Health care service delay, cross-sectional, odd ratio, tuberculosis, Logistic regression, patient delay.

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