[Knowledge of the Bamako general population of tuberculosis]

The hope of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the fight against tuberculosis rests today on the implementation of the strategy DOTS. The success of this strategy passes obligatorily by an implication of the parents, neighbors in one word of the population living with the patient; this is why we fixed our objective to study knowledge on the tuberculosis of the people of more than 18 years of the district of Bamako. We carried out a cross-sectional study supplemented by focus-groups in 3 districts of Bamako near the general population (socio-medical personnel, old tuberculous, and helping natural) for the period from the 1st of June to July 15, 2004. Our sample was composed of 246 people for the individual questionnaires and of 47 per 8 meetings of focus group: the sex ratio was 2,5 in favour of the men and 60,2% of our subjects had less than 30 years. In the general population of Bamako 24,8% had a good knowledge, 49,0% an average knowledge and 26,2% a bad knowledge. 48,8 % of those which had a good knowledge were the pupils, students and civils servant. So in general the population had a good knowledge on symptomatology (90,2 %), it on the other hand had the knowledge very limited on the etiology (only 10,6% of the subject knew that tuberculosis is caused by a mycobactery) or on the modes of transmission (cigarettes, soap, meat). The population of Bamako has a very passable level of knowledge on tuberculosis. If this level is good with regard to symptomatology, it is very insufficient on the etiology or on the transmission of the disease. To improve this knowledge one needs a sensitizing supported for television and the radio in the dialects and national languages.