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Abstract
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Background: Understanding tuberculosis (TB) treatment programs' process and the outcome
is one of the critical strategies to prevent the disease's occurrence and accelerate achieving
sustainable development goals to reduce TB cases. The present study aimed to evaluate
directly observed treatment short-course (DOTs) for tuberculosis.
Methods: The present cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study extracted information
from the tuberculosis surveillance system's recorded data by a researcher-made checklist
with questions from patients and health system staff. We analyzed the data by SPSS
version 20.
Results: The outcome of patients' treatment was 85.39% improved, and the rest were death
and failure of treatment and absence from treatment. The mean and standard deviation of
the onset of the first symptom and diagnosis and detection of the disease was 117 and 126
days, respectively. The mean and standard deviation of the interval between diagnosis and
treatment was 5.53 and 8.03 days, respectively. Regarding the treatment length, 95.5% of
the cases followed the treatment length, and the rest were not observed. The history of hospitalization was 45.3% among patients, and the rest had no history of hospitalization,
and the mean and standard deviation of the day of hospitalization were 6.68 ± 9.50 days.
Conclusions: The existence of an appropriate program for early diagnosis of tuberculosis,
observing the length of treatment, training private and public centers to strengthen the
care system, and strengthening the DOTs program to control tuberculosis seems to be
necessary.
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