Among the issues examined in the larger study were historical perspectives on the disease, public-private partnership, selleck chemicals llc integration of TB and HIV control programmes, and obstacles and opportunities for TB control interventions. This study combined quantitative and qualitative methods, leading to a mixed method approach [21]. The quantitative data are treatment outcomes, available from 1997 to 2010 from the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP). The data were collected through passive surveillance and are disaggregated by region and the two tertiary hospitals in the country, the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KABTH) and the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH). The treatment outcome information available in the data set is the number of people cured, completed treatment, died, treatment failure, and defaulters.

A TB case is categorized as cured when a patient completes all prescribed doses and is documented to have recorded two Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries or more consecutive negative cultures after six months of starting treatment. Treatment completion occurs when all prescribed Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries doses are adhered to but lacking bacteriologic proof of cure because a patient is unable to produce sputum. Death occurs if during the treatment period, the patient dies with TB as the major cause of death, or death arising from toxicity due to anti-TB medications after receiving at least one week of anti-TB medications. Treatment is categorized as a ��failure�� if there is presence of positive culture for M. tuberculosis after four months of treatment. Treatment default is when treatment is interrupted for two or more consecutive months after initiation of treatment.

Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries Because the treatment outcome data were captured as count data, Poisson regression was used to analyse Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries the treatment Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries outcomes data. This was chosen because, first, the data did not contain any zeros to warrant the application of Zero-inflated and also, the data did not show evidence of dispersion to permit the use of Negative binomial regression. Simple linear regression will also not be applicable in this case because the data was not collected through random sampling. The results are presented in incident rate ratio (IRR). The qualitative data was collected from national, regional, district and health facility TB coordinators and service providers.

At the national level, three senior programme officers were interviewed, two of whom had been with the programme since 1994 and thus were able to provide detailed Cilengitide information about the programme. In addition to the national officers, four regional TB coordinators were selected based on the recorded TB case notifications in these regions. In each of the regions selected, the district with the highest notification rate of TB was chosen and the district coordinators (4) included in the study.