Abstract
BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis remains a serious public health threat to people of all sexes and ages in Nigeria. A World Health Organization (WHO) global tuberculosis report indicated that Enugu reported a slight increase in all cases of tuberculosis, and case reporting and findings remain low. Any intervention that could improve the knowledge of tuberculosis and treatment referral services will improve case reporting/finding and reduce the incidence rate. The study determined the impact or effectiveness of health education interventions on the knowledge and management practices of patent medicine vendors (PMVs) in the rural local government area of Enugu State, Nigeria. METHODS: A quasi-experimental study designed with experimental and control groups was carried out among 400 PMVs in rural LGAs in Enugu State. A multistage sampling method was used to select the participants. Thereafter, a pre- and post-tests was administered using self-administered semi structured questionnaire cast in English language was used to obtain the responses of the same respondents before and after an education intervention. The educational intervention lasted for 3 months. The data collected were analyzed via the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. The Independent sample t-test was used to compare means between the groups, while Pearson chi-square was used to determine the association between variables. The P-value of < or equal to 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: The results of this study revealed that most of the respondents had ages ranging between 18 and 51 years, with mean ages of 39 ± 13.4 and 40 ± 14.7 years for males and females, respectively. Primary and secondary schools were identified as the highest level of education attained by most of the respondents. The results revealed that PMVs had poor knowledge and management of TB in the pre-intervention phase, whereas in the post intervention phase, the p value of the cause of TB was p = 0.002 and that of knowledge of the correct signs and symptoms of TB was p = 0.025; and that of knowledge of the infective nature of TB, transmission, vulnerability, and the need for referral was p = 0.001 at p < 0.05. The overall effect of this intervention shows that PMVs knowledge on TB increased from ± 28.0% to 97.3. CONCLUSION: The study revealed that educating PMVs positively improved their knowledge of tuberculosis and the need for PMVs to refer their customers with suspected cases TB to screening centers and not inappropriately treating them. Therefore, emphasis should be placed on more training and retraining to improve TB knowledge and management among PMVs in Enugu State.