Five-year tuberculosis trends analysis in eight districts of Mwanza region, Tanzania; (2017- 2021)

Abstract Background. In Tanzania like other developing countries, TB detection is hindered by totally missed, late notification and delayed diagnosis of active cases. Apart from having TB control strategies and interventions to detect patients and put them on treatment to cut down the chain of transmission, we are unaware of the existing burden and trends of tuberculosis for the previous five years in the Mwanza region. This study aimed at determining trends of tuberculosis in Mwanza region Tanzania for a period of five years, from 2017 to 2021. Methods. We extracted routine TB diagnostic data from 2017 to 2021 from eight districts of the Mwanza region of Tanzania from the electronic TB database. Data were captured in Microsoft office Excel 2007 in collaboration with district TB and leprosy coordinators and then imported into STATA 13 (Stata corp LLC, College Station, TX, USA) for analysis. We estimated TB case detection rate per 100,000 population. Results. A total of 6,414 laboratory confirmed tuberculosis cases were detected in eight districts of Mwanza region in Tanzania during the year 2017 to 2021. Average tuberculosis detection rate in five years was 34.7 per 100,000 population. Overall, TB the detection rate was two times higher in people without HIV (30.5) compared to those infected with HIV; 13.4 per 100,000 population. Of the 15 rifampicin resistant TB cases detected, 66.7% (10/15) were uninfected with HIV compared to 33.3% (5/15) that were detected in year 2018. Conclusion The TB case detection rate decreased in Mwanza region from 43.9 in 2017 to 21.4 per 100,000 population in 2021. Other parameters were missing in the data base which highlight remarkable gaps in the established database to monitor TB management in the region. The program require to investigate and improve on barriers hindering fully documentation of cases information’s which are very necessary for the program to attain its goals.