Ukrainians do no believe that they can be cured of tuberculosis.
To the words of UNIAN correspondent, this fact is proved by the results of sociological research carried out by the Foundation for Development of Ukraine, which were presented at the press conference in Kyiv today.
 
In particular, according to the research data, no one of the respondents believes that being infected with TB you can get the required help at the place of residence. Only 28% of the Ukrainians know that TB diagnostics and treatment are free and more than 30% believe that TB treatment is very expensive.
 
One of the paradoxes showed by the sociological research is that people trust doctors but do not believe that they will be provided with qualified medical help. At the same time one third of residents of Donetskaya Oblast believe that it is quite real to get infected with TB. As it was stated at the conference this is quite a high indicator compared with other regions in the country.
 
The research has also shown that 100% of the Ukrainian population has been informed on TB disease. However, the level of knowledge regarding the TB symptoms at early stages of disease is quite low - 84% of the respondents are sure that the key symptom of TB is coughing although at early stages of the disease coughing is not observed.  
 
As for the attitude to the people infected with TB more than a half respondents replied negatively to the question "Would you employ a person infected with TB?" and 23% refrained from answering. In Donetskaya Oblast the level of tolerance to the people ill with TB is even lower - 61% would refuse to employ the TB infected people.
 
To the opinion of the people infected with TB the most efficient aspect in TB struggling would be improvement of the social and economic situation in Ukraine (73%).
 
Monitoring was of comparative nature - the poll involves the residents of all the oblasts of the country (2 thousand persons) and separately the residents of Donetskaya Oblast (800 persons).
 
The purpose of the research was to find out how urgent the TB problem is in the mind of the Ukrainians, the attitude towards TB infected people in the community and the level of credit to domestic medicine.

UNIAN (www.unian.net)
25.09.2007 16:31