Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) Visit among Tuberculosis Patients in Pulogadung Sub-district Primary Health Centre

摘要

Background: Based on Indonesian Ministry of Health Regulation no. 74 year 2014, Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) is an obligatory national program for all lung tuberculosis (TB) patients. However, according to annual report year 2016 of Pulogadung Sub-District Primary Health Care, East Jakarta, Indonesia; there were only 175 out of 237 (73.8%) TB patients who have been checked for their Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) status, but the target of the program was 100%. However, a community diagnosis to investigate this shortage for about two years has not been done before. Objective: To explore related-factors that causes the low number of VCT among TB patients in Pulogadung Sub-District Primary Health Care. Methods: In-depth individual interviews were performed on twenty TB patients that had not done VCT along with Focus Group Discussion (FGD) on eight TB officers from seven villages under Pulogadung Primary Health Care. Thematic keywords were found and analyzed qualitatively. Results: From the TB patients, it was found that the majority of them knew about TB but only some of them knew about HIV. Most of them did not know the correlation between TB and HIV. Patients were not willing to take VCT because they felt that they were not in the risk of HIV. Meanwhile, there were still TB officers who only gave HIV education to risky TB patients. Conclusion: In conclusion, TB patients who had not done VCT felt they did not have risky behaviors to HIV. This was also because of lack of HIV counseling from TB officers to TB patients.