Caracterización de la tuberculosis sensible en el Ecuador: una visión epidemiológica a un antiguo y latente problema de salud

Abstract

Context: It is estimated that in 2013, nine million subjects contracted tuberculosis and 1.5 mil-lion died, of which 360,000 subjects were HIV positive.
Material and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was performed in patients diagnosed with tuberculosis in Ecuador during the period January 2009 to December 2013. The universe comprises 100% of the population affected by sensitive tuberculosis.
Results: men predominate, with an average ratio of 1.8 men per woman, with an interval of 15-54 years, the province of Guayas concentrates a little more than 50% of the cases of Tb; 75% of cases were concentrated in 5 provinces that are Guayas, Los Ríos, Pichincha, El Oro and Manabí. The therapeutic failures, in 2011 in Ecuador reaches a mean of 6.6%, the thera-peutic abandonment was 9.9% with a gradual decrease, the mortality rate shows a reduction of more than 50%.
Conclusion: the results reflect the need to define a strategy to increase the per-centage of symptomatic respiratory identification, which will increase the number of cases diag-nosed to approximate the WHO country estimates. In addition, the DOT strategy should be strengthened in order to improve therapeutic success and recuse failures and dropouts.