Undergraduate thesis.

Tuberculosis is a common illness here in our country and some of the reasons may include poverty, close housing system, over population, and lack of knowledge about the disease. This was the reason why we would like to study if the programs launched by the Department of Health (DOH) called the Direct Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) program and the National Tuberculosis Program (NTP), are really effective and are introduced to the people around the Philippines specially in the community to lessen the occurrence, the spread of the disease and to share or teach the proper ways of managing and preventing the disease. Tuberculosis is a nationwide public health problem. It ranked sixth in Mortality (36.1/100,000 population 1997, NEC report) as well in Morbidity (169.1/100,000 population 2000, NEC Report in) in the country. It affects mostly the productively age group 15-59 (about 70%) about & five people die in tuberculosis. The Philippines is a developing country where tuberculosis (TB) remains a significant public health problem. Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It kills more than two million people per year, making it the single leading microbial killer of adults (Frieden et al. 2003). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one-third of the world's population is infected with M. tuberculosis and nearly two billion people, one-third of the world's population, have TB. These cases, however, disproportionately occur in the developing world, particularly in Asia (Corbett et al. 2005), where, for example, it is estimated that approximately 40 percent of people living in the Indian subcontinent, China and the Pacific Rim are infected with TB (Dye et al. 2006). The Philippines is especially hard-hit by the disease, having the second highest incidence of TB in Asia (Corbett et al. 2005). Simple health sector interventions have been inadequate to stem this staggering toll here and elsewhere (Gupta et al. 2004). Thus, there exists a need for complete assessment of the impact of TB, not simply to inform policy-makers of the burden of disease but also to provide the basis for targeted interventions in TB control (Nunn et al. 2005). Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major public health in the Philippines. In 1998, TB ranked fifth in the ten leading cause of death and fifth in the ten leading causes of illness. Our country ranks second to Cambodia in terms of new smear- positive TB notification rate, 99.7 per 100,000 populations, among the major countries in the WHO Western Pacific Region in 1999.