Alcohol and Tobacco Use among the HIV/TB Co-Infected Individuals: A Case of Nepal

TB is the most common opportunistic infection among HIV infected individuals. Moreover, alcohol and tobacco use also facilitate to develop TB in patients with HIV. Both alcohol and tobacco use act as barrier to access preventive and therapeutic services of HIV/TB illness. The main objective of the study was to identify the effect of alcohol and tobacco use to access the health care services among HIV/TB co-infected individuals. Quantitative techniques were adopted to collect data in five districts ( Jhapa, Morang, Sunsari, Parsa, and Kavre) of Nepal. The study was conducted over one year period from May 2015 to April 2016. During the period 343 samples were enrolled above the age of 18 or older, who had history of HIV/TB co-infection. Convenient and snowballing sampling methods were used to collect the data till the desired sample size was reached. Pretested questionnaire was used to gather socio-demographic characteristics (residence, age, sex, marital status, religion) and behavior pattern (alcohol and smoking consumption) of respondents. This research used liner regression analysis and ANOVA test association among categorical variables. The result shows that the demographic variables only explain 13.9 % of the variation use of tobacco smoking and 7.2 % of variation of consumption of alcohol among HIV/TB co-infected individuals. The findings of ANOVA showed that there was significance difference (p=0.029) between alcohol consumption and ART/DOTS non-adherence. The study revealed that the prevalence of alcohol and smoking consumption was found among study population and both contributes significant difference between ART/DOTS non-adherence.