Leprosy Patients Attending the Out Patient’s Clinic at Agra: A Retrospective Analysis of the Characteristics and Frequency of Regularity VS Irregularity for Determining Absenteeism, Non-adherence and Non-compliance
- 1 National JALMA Institute for Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases, India
Abstract
This study reports a retrospective analysis of the records of 2709 leprosy patients, attending the Out patient’s Clinic at Agra, over a 1-year period, 2005. The patients with leprosy have been categorized into three groups, viz., regular, irregular and the drop-outs. The number of drop-out patients was significantly higher [Z=2.16, p=0.05] among males, 32.14% (667) when compared with females, 26.50% (168). Religion was not observed to be a significant determinant in the regularity, irregularity and/or drop-out among the patients but the locality/residential background seemed to play a key role in Clinic attendance. Patients from urban areas were less regular 38.9% (218) and the number of irregulars and drop-outs were more, i.e., 24.1% (135) and 37% (207), respectively when compared with the patients from rural areas [X2 =14.894, p=0.00006]. Pauci-bacillary or multibacillary type of leprosy did not appear to be a significant determinant in the regularity, irregularity and / or drop-out among the patients. With regard to the various professions, the number of irregulars and drop-outs among patients engaged in some kind of business seemed to be more. The patients in whom the disease had become inactive, 69.7% (60) seemed to be more regular in clinic attendance than the patients with active leprosy disease. The irregularity and drop-out rate was significantly less [X2=5.107, p=0.078]. In all, 1226 (45.26%) patients were found to be regular in clinic attendance but 648 (23.92%) patients were irregular and 835(30.83%) patients were dropouts. The present study looked at the characteristics and factors responsible for irregular attendance of a large number of patients over a 1-year period, even after 50 years of implementation of the Leprosy Control/elimination programmes. This study is the first of its kind in Northern India.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajidsp.2007.36.41
Copyright: © 2007 Virendra S. Yadav, Kiran Katoch and Tahziba Hussain. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- Leprosy patients
- OPD attendance
- irregularity
- non-adherence
- non-compliance