ANALISE DO CONHECIMENTO DA PROBLEMATICA DA TUBERCULOSE POR PROFISSIONAIS DE SAUDE DO MUNICIPIO DE APIACA, ES

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which affect mainly the lungs, but can also occur at different organs. It is considered a public health problem which is aggravated by AIDS epidemic. The contributing factors for the tuberculosis permanence are the social inequality, few research investments for new treatments and vaccines, migratory flows, health system flaws and high levels of multi-drug resistant cases associated to HIV infection. The goal of this research was to evaluate the healthcare professionals knowledge of the municipality of Apiaca (ES) about the aspects related to tuberculosis (preventing, treatment and symptoms) and the needing to indentify active search activities, the detection, accompaniment and the treatment abandon levels reduction. To do that, it was also applied a questionnaire related to the theme for 30 healthcare professionals from that location. Despite of the studied population know some aspects of tuberculosis, still there are some fails in the tuberculosis control program in that location, possibly because of the lack of qualified human resources to combat the disease, generating function overloading among those healthcare professionals. Training better the capability of those workers is necessary to prevent the disease among the population, to detect tuberculosis precociously and treat it adequately. It is essential to create health education strategies to improve the population knowledge about preventing, transmission, treatment and cure of tuberculosis.