Estimating and Explaining the Differences in Health Care Seeking by Symptom Burden Among Persons With Presumptive Tuberculosis: Findings From a Population-Based Tuberculosis Prevalence Survey in a High-Burden Setting in India

Background: There is a lack of research evidence on the quantitative relationship between symptom burden and health care seeking among individuals with presumptive tuberculosis (TB).

Methods: Data were derived from a cross-sectional population-based TB survey conducted between February 2021 and July 2022 in 32 districts of India. Eligible and consented participants (age >15 years) underwent TB symptom screening and history elicitation. Fairlie decomposition analysis was used to estimate the net differences in health care seeking due to varied symptom burden-from 1+ burden (>1 symptom) to 4+ burden (>4 symptoms)-and decomposed by observable covariates based on logit models with 95% CIs.

Results: Of the 130 932 individuals surveyed, 9540 (7.3%) reported at least 1 recent TB symptom, of whom 2678 (28.1%; 95% CI, 27.1%-28.9%) reportedly sought health care. The net differences in health care seeking among persons with symptom burden 1+ to 4+ ranged from 6.6 percentage points (95% CI, 4.8-8.4) to 7.7 (95% CI, 5.2-10.2) as compared with persons with less symptom burden. The presence of expectoration, fatigue, and loss of appetite largely explained health care seeking (range, 0.9-3.1 percentage points [42.89%-151.9%]). The presence of fever, cough, past TB care seeking, weight loss, and chest pain moderately explained (range, 5.3%-25.3%) health care seeking.

Conclusions: Increased symptom burden and symptoms other than the commonly emphasized cough and fever largely explained health care seeking. Orienting TB awareness and risk communications toward symptom burden and illness perceptions could help address population gaps in health care seeking for TB.