Are official reports sufficient? Official registration rates of patients with tuberculosis in Sivas, Middle Anatolia

Ozsahin, S.L.; Akkurt, I.; Ozdemir, L.; Dogan, O.T.; Atalan, A.; Kocoglu, F.

doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2005.12.006

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Volume 120, Issue 5 , Pages 434-440, May 2006

Are official reports sufficient? Official registration rates of patients with tuberculosis in Sivas, Middle Anatolia

S.L. Ozsahin
- Department of Chest Diseases, Cumhuriyet University Medical School, Sivas, Turkey
I. Akkurt
- Department of Chest Diseases, Cumhuriyet University Medical School, Sivas, Turkey
L. Ozdemir
- Department of Public Health, Cumhuriyet University Medical School, Sivas, Turkey
- Corresponding author. Address: Department of Public Health, Cumhuriyet Universitesi Tıp Fakultesi, Kampus, 58140 Sivas, Turkey. Tel.: +90 346 2191300 2846; fax: +90 346 2191151.
O.T. Dogan
- Department of Chest Diseases, Cumhuriyet University Medical School, Sivas, Turkey
A. Atalan
- Department of Chest Diseases, Cumhuriyet University Medical School, Sivas, Turkey
F. Kocoglu
- Department of Public Health, Cumhuriyet University Medical School, Sivas, Turkey

Received 1 March 2005; received in revised form 8 November 2005; accepted 7 December 2005.

Summary

Purpose

The main goal of this retrospective study was to re-evaluate all available records of clinical and laboratory data of patients with tuberculosis (TB) in Sivas province, Middle Anatolia, Turkey.

Methods

TB registration data held at health institutions in Sivas province were compared and matched with data obtained from the local official TB registries from January 2000 to December 2001.

Results

Of the 536 TB cases found in 2000 and 2001, 255 (47.6%) were officially registered. Of the 127 cases with smear-positive pulmonary TB (PTB), only nine cases labelled as smear-positive were registered in local dispensaries. The incidence of unregistered cases with smear-positive PTB found by this study was approximately 40-fold and eightfold greater than the incidence of registered cases for 2000 and 2001, respectively.

Conclusion

There were many more unofficially recorded TB patients compared with officially recorded cases in Sivas province between 2000 and 2001. The results of this study are disappointing and alarming for Turkey's national TB control programme, at least for its regional applications.

Keywords: Incidence, Pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis, Registration system