Gender, Social Discrimination and Health Outcome

In India, stigma driven discrimination due to diseases, low status of women in family and decision making power for treatment seeking has impact on health outcome of women which has been largely ignored in TB research and control efforts. In present paper attempt has been made to study the linkages between gender, social discrimination attached to TB and its influence on health outcome. Study uses small scale data collected from 367 tuberculosis patients living in slums of M-ward, Mumbai. Result reveals that female tend to hide their disease status and experiences more discrimination compared to male. Bi-variate and multivariate result shows that among women lower gap in knowledge about TB, adherence, shorter health system delay and experience of no discrimination likely to result with positive health outcome. Whilst among male, working, adherence, lesser symptoms of TB is significantly linked with successful outcome. Differences in factors of male and female in successful outcome show that condition of women is poor in accessing effective treatment due to social barriers attached. This clearly brings the need to focus on stigma and discrimination attached to TB in the community. Knowledge programs need to emphasis more on educating women about TB.