Tuberculosis patient and family education through videography in El Salvador.

Background: Tublosis (TB) and the approaches to successful management are commonly misunderstood health topics among patients and family members within resource-limited settings. Such public misconceptions often result in delayed diagnoses of afflicted patients, suboptimal compliance with prescribed therapies and a negative community social stigma that hinders effective contact investigations.

Objective: To determine through an observational field pilot study if videography-based TB education program can be implemented in busy resource-limited outpatient TB clinic settings and improve both patient and family understanding of TB and its treatment, as well as, improve the efficiency of TB medical evaluations and corresponding contact investigations.

[Primary resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 30 health institutions of El Salvador. A pilot study].

In view of the worldwide re-emergency of tuberculosis (TB) and the rise of pulmonary TB (TBP) resistant to the two main first line drugs, namely isoniazid (H) and rifampin (R), so called multidrug resistant TBP (MDR-TBP), it was considered necessary to carry out a national, non randomized, multicenter, prospective pilot survey to determine the rates of resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in patients with no previous antituberculous treatment (primary resistance). A total of 30 health institutions were chosen (disseminated among the 14 districts of the country) with the most TBP cases reported in 1997, and asked to provide in a consecutive non random way, sputum samples from new smear positive TB patients starting the first working week of January until the last one of December 1998; these samples were processed for culture at the Tuberculosis Section of the Health Ministry Central Laboratory. Those that resulted positive for MTB underwent a test for resistance to the first line drugs used in this country (isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, ethambutol and streptomycin).