Monitoring delays in diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in eight cities in Colombia.

Objective To measure time between onset of tuberculosis (TB) symptoms and start of treatment, and to identify factors associated with delay in eight Colombian cities. Methods Operational research with a retrospective analytical cohort design was conducted in 2014 using routinely collected data about new smear-positive pulmonary TB patients from eight cities in Colombia (Barranquilla, Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Cali, Cúcuta, Medellín, Pereira, and Villavicencio). Date of symptom onset was sourced from TB surveillance databases.