Introduction: Treatment outcome is an important indicator of tuberculosis control programs, as suggested by the World Health Organization. However, this has not been well documented in the study area. This work contributes to a better understanding this issue. Methodology: A five-year (2009-2013) retrospective cohort study was conducted between April and May 2014, in six randomly selected health institutions providing tuberculosis treatment in western Ethiopia. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess the association between treatment outcomes and predictor variables. Results: A total of 1,175 tuberculosis patients with a mean (standard deviation) age of 29.91 (13.99) were involved in the study. The majority of the study participants had smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (39.7%) and extrapulmonary tuberculosis (39.7%). Of all the study participants, 14.5% were cured, 56.3% completed treatment, 0.2% had treatment failure, 8.1% died during follow-up, 7.1% were reported as defaulters, and 13.8% were transferred out to another health institution. The overall treatment success rate was 70.8% and show progressive increases over the course of the study. The associated predictors were enrollment years, HIV co-infection, and sputum smear follow-up in the second, fifth, and seven months. Conclusions: The treatment success rate was unsatisfactory in spite of improvement seen over the study period. Thus, continued follow-up of patients, with frequent supportive supervision during the course of treatment, and provision of early detection and follow-up for HIV infection need to be strengthened to achieve an effective treatment outcome.

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A retrospective study was conducted to assess TB treatment outcome and thus evaluate DOTS programme in Benishangul Gumuz Region, western Ethiopia. The records of 3658 TB patients registered in the two hospitals between November, 2003 and October, 2012 at DOTS Clinics were analyzed. From the total patients, 2,223 (60.77%) were successfully treated, 315 (8.61%) lost to follow up, 341 (9.32%) died, 4 (0.11%) failed treatment and 775 (21.19%) not evaluated. There is no association in treatment success rate between new and previously treated patients (60.55% vs. 58.33%, X 2 =0.14; P>0.704). When transferred out (not evaluated) is excluded, the success rate was increased approximately by a rate of 0.03 times while the time is increased by one year (β=0.03106; CI=0.0218-0.0403). Smear negative pulmonary TB patients had 1.24 times low treatment success rate (64.08% vs. 58.07%; CI=1.02-1.51; P<0.001) compared to smear positive. Patients from Pawe areas had 1.34 times lower treatment success rate compared to cases from Assosa (64.91% vs. 58.57%; CI=1.16-1.55). Not evaluated and lost to follow up rates were higher in Pawe (24.93% vs. 14.16%; X 2 =38.66; P<0.001 and 10.10% vs. 5.82%; X 2 =16.40; P<0.001 respectively) while death rate was higher in Assosa (14.95% vs. 6.33%; X 2 =59.05; P<0.001). Accordingly, males and elders had the trend to be more likely to experience death. In conclusion, the treatment success rate of TB patients was low which accounts for 60.77%. Low treatment success and high proportion of death (9.32%) and defaulted (8.61%) rates are serious public health concerns that point out low DOTs programme performance in the study areas.

Background:Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major health problems in Ethiopia.Congregate settings like prisons are the most important conducive environment for the transmission of tuberculosis (TB), but they are often given less attention.Objective:This study was done to assess point prevalence and associated factors of pulmonary tuberculosis inBenishangulGumuz Region prisons.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from February to April 2018 in three zonalprisons of BenishangulGumuz Region. PTB symptom screening according to WHO criteria was done to all prisoners resided in the prisons during the data collection period. One morning sputum wasobtained from 84 eligible prisoners and tested for mycobacterium tuberculosis using gene expert. Results: The prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis among the total prisoners was 0.24% (8/3395) and among those with cough duration of more than two weeks was 9.5% (8/84). One newly diagnosed case in Kamash prison was found to be drug resistant TB. Predictors identified for PTB werecough for more than four weeks duration and body mass index less than18.5kg/m 2 were significantly associated with odds of being cases of pulmonary tuberculosis.Conclusions: The finding of this study showed that tuberculosis among prisoners having cough of two or more week's duration in BenishangulGumuz Region prisons was found to be high. Rifampicin resistant TB was also identified in one of the prison which is a public health crisis and a global health security risk carrying grave consequences for those affected. In order to reduce the burden of TB in prisons regular screening of the prisoners and routine screening of newly introduced prisoners should be in place.