Tuberculosis Situation in Qinghai and Health Education Intervention

Tuberculosis is no longer a threat in the developed world, but it is still a leading cause of death in much of the developing countries, especially in resource-poor areas. Qinghai plateau locates in the northeastern part of Qinghai-Tibet plateau, where is characterized by high altitude, low pressure, less oxygen and underdeveloped economy. Qinghai is a province of animal husbandry and its vast territory is rural area and people there raise livestock as their main economy. Of the 5.8 million people, 1.72 million people infected with TB. Human and bovine can both be infected with tuberculosis which caused by M.tuberculosis and M.bovis respectively. Most TB cases in Qinghai occurred among rural residents, especially in herdsmen. There may be a number of TB patients infected with M.bovis rather than M.tuberculosis in rural area or vice versa. However we found farmers and herdsmen have little knowledge on tuberculosis, the awareness rate on core knowledge of tuberculosis was less than 50%, and awareness towards infection source and transmission of tuberculosis is only 60.15%. Most of them knew nothing about cattle could be infected with TB and bovine tuberculosis may be transmitted to humans under certain conditions. TB is a preventable and curable disease, and health education is an effective way to make public know more knowledge, so conducting TB health education is vital for TB prevention and control. Given the situation of many ethnic minority groups mixed living in the rural areas, health education should be carried out by using simple language and innovatively, pictures and brochures should be printed bilingually.

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