Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS co-infection Rate among Tuberculosis patients in Sokoto TB Centre, North Western Nigeria

Abstract

Background: The resurgence of TB infection after many decades of decline has been reported in recent times, and has been attributed to the high rate of HIV infection. The paucity of information on the prevalence of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS co-infection in Sokoto has motivated this study.

Methodology: The study was a cross-sectional descriptive study to determine the occurrence of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS co-infection among ninety samples positive for sputum acid fast bacilli (AFB) attending DOTS point centre in Sokoto. The patients were counseled and consented patients were tested for presence of HIV antibodies using HIV 1/2 Determine®, Unigold® and Stat-Pak® rapid test kits in a serial algorithm.

Results: The prevalence of HIV co-infection among TB patients obtained from this study was 5.6% (2.2% female and 3.3% male), the female to male ratio of TB patients was 1:2.9, while the ratio of co-infection of HIV among TB patients for female to male was 1:1.5. 100% of co-infected patients were married and 80.4% of co-infected patients were illiterates while 58.9% of them were business men and the remaining19.6% were farmers and unemployed. No co-infection was found among patients that were civil servants and the socio-demographic factors indicates a no statistical significant differences (p-value > 0.05).The result also revealed co-infection occurred in age range of 21-40 years only, with age group 31 – 40 years having the highest prevalence of co-infection.

Conclusion: We conclude from this study that the occurrance of HIV/AIDS among tuberculosis patients is high 5(5.6%) and does not correlates with the increase in HIV prevalence for Sokoto state in recent times.