Socio-Economic Impact of Parental Tuberculosis on School Going Children: Study at State Medical College and Hospital, Punjab, India

Abstract

Tuberculosis is haunting mankind since ages and still remains a panglobal phenomenon affecting people from every walk of life. The impact on children in the family was studied in respect of 1) social, economic and demographic characteristics of the parents (who were patients), 2) the child care functions of mothers who were patients and 3) effect on children's education. In all. 575 children of 300 tuberculous parents were studied. The socio-economic and demographic characteristics revealed that majority of the patients suffering from tuberculosis were from economically productive age group of 31-40 years and that gender of the suffering parents had no significant impact on the child's discontinuity of education and school dropout rate. The child caring on the part of mothers fell significantly; children who dropped out of school were significantly higher in families with more than 4 members. The school dropout children were forced to do labour to support and feed their familiesadding to the menace of child labour.