Abstract:

Introduction: Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious bacterial infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The lungs are primary involved, but the infection can spread to other organ. Since there is no study done in Tanga-Region to evaluate the burden of this disease. The study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of Pulmonary Tuberculosis in HIV/AIDS infected children at Bombo regional hospital.

Methodology: This was a retrospective cross-sectional study. It was done in Tanga regional hospital from 1st June, 2012 to 31st July 2013. There hundred and eight four cases notes of children were collected randomly among inpatients and outpatients attendances by using a structured checklist until the sample size was reached. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 17. A p-value <0.05 was considered significant at 95% confidence interval.

Results: In this study 384 (11.6%) HIV/AIDS infected children were selected among all children attending at Bombo hospital in the period of one year. Among all 70 (18.2%) had active PTB, 6 (1.6%) EPTB, 125 (32.6%) associated factors, 58 (15.1%) died and 259 (67.4%) had only HIV infection. Malnutrition 22.4% was the first cause of death among all associated factors in HIV infected and the children who fall in age group 5-8 years shows to be infected with PTB about 47.1% compare to other age group with significant p-value of 0.047 while EPTB less significant with p-value of 0.08.

Conclusion: TB is still a devastating problem in HIV/AIDS infected children that lead to morbidity and mortality of these children. The prevalence of PTB in HIV infected children was 18.2% which was low compare to worldwide. PTB becomes alarming problems due to the increase in HIV burden which lead up to many diseases such as anaemia, pneumonia, malnutrition and malaria which contribute to high mortality rate. Therefore education and good care and treatment should be given to the HIV infected mother with their children in order to reduce this high incidence of PTB.