Abstract:
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major public health problems in HIV sero-positive individuals in
many developing countries including Ethiopia. The present study was conducted to determine the
prevalence of TB and immunological status among HIV sero-positive individuals at Kolfe
Keraniyo Sub-city in Addis Ababa. The design of the study was a cross-sectional survey
involving a sample population of 384 HIV sero- positive individuals who were selected from
three health centers. Socio-demographic data of the patients were collected using structured
questionnaire survey. Patients’ with TB was identified using clinical diagnosis, laboratory and
microbiological examination of their sputum samples using smear microscopy. Analysis was
done using SPSS version 16 statistical software and chi-square and odds ratio were used as
measures of association. P-value less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant for all
tests. The result showed that the prevalence of TB among different age groups of the HIV
patients was 33.1%. Of these, the prevalence of tuberculosis for all groups of males and females
was 30% and 35.3%, respectively. TB was significantly associated with some of the risk factors;
such as family size, educational status, occupation ( p<0.001). It was also associated with some
other socio-demographic factors, such as sex, age and marital status. HIV-TB co infected
patients had a significantly lower CD4
+
T-cell counts (P<0.001.) compared to TB negative HIV
patients. In general, the study has revealed that TB was a major public health problem among HIV sero-positive individuals. Low income, large family size, poor educational status, poor
awareness of TB might have responsible for significantly increasing the occurrence of this
infection. Increasing people’s awareness of TB and provisions of health education about
personal hygiene and environmental sanitation, ventilating houses and having proper feeding
habit are recommended to minimize the risk and exposure of TB in the study area.
