The impact of social conditions on patient adherence to pulmonary tuberculosis treatment.

Setting: Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the main concerns in global health. One of the main threats to treatment success is patient non-adherence to anti-tuberculosis treatment.

Objective: To identify the relation between social conditions and treatment adherence in a prospective cohort setting in an intermediate TB burden country.

Design: To identify associations between poor adherence and social conditions, including educational level, type of residence and occupation, we constructed hierarchical logistic regression models.

Results: A total of 551 participants were included in the study. Low educational levels, poor housing and occupations in the construction and manufacturing industries and service sectors were associated with poor adherence; this association was likely to be differentiated by previous history of anti-tuberculosis treatment.

Conclusion: Policy making should focus on improving the social conditions of patients by working towards better housing conditions and providing health promoting working conditions to enable treatment adherence.