Facility infrastructure of primary health services regarding tuberculosis control: a countrywide cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND

Tuberculosis (TB) is still a major public health problem in many countries, including Brazil. Primary health care (PHC) services are a set of important services with infrastructure and resources to diagnose, treat, and cure several diseases, including the TB.

AIM

The aim of this study is to analyse aspects of the facility infrastructure of Brazilian PHC, regarding the control and treatment of TB from a countrywide perspective.

METHODS

This is a cross-sectional study based on PHC services. Data were collected from 38,812 health centres and were assessed by means of the National Program for Improving Access and Quality Primary Care. The outcome was obtained by the presence and availability of the following infrastructure items: air circulation in the consultation room, refrigerator, individual protective equipment, plastic jar for sputum examination, and TB notification form of the primary care information system. Poisson regression was used to calculate the prevalence ratio.

FINDINGS

Of the 38,812 evaluated centres, only 1628 (4.2%) presented a positive result regarding the outcome. Primary health centres, among all types of centres, presented the highest quality of facility infrastructure for TB control. Centres with large workloads, as well as those that presented a list of offered services and a welcoming consulting room, also presented the highest quality infrastructure. The present study shows that major improvements should be made to the infrastructure to reach a satisfactory TB control in Brazil.