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Background & Objective: About 1.3 billions people are infected with Tuberculosis (TB) all over the world. There is a close relationship between the quality of TB treatment and the rate of drug resistance. The recurrence epidemy of TB and increased resistance to some drugs was the basis for the WHO to suggest the directly observed short course treatment strategy or (DOTS) strategy, for the TB patients. Materials & Methods: This research was a cohort study and aimed to evaluate the epidemiological finding, the clinical basis and strategy of DOTS on improving, and prevention from failure of treatment and was compared with non-DOTS procedure. Sample population were total of 260 smear positive patients that had been under study for a period of 2 years (1999-2000). All of the patients were new cases. SPSS software and Fisher exact test was used to analyzed the data. Results: The rate of treatment failure in DOTS strategy in the beginning of 5th month was 1.7%, but in the control group the failure in the same period was 7.3% (P<0.05). Conclusion: This study indicated that the DOTS strategy is substantially increasing the success rate of TB treatment.

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Background and Objective: Failure of tuberculosis (TB) treatment is a major problem of health systems in developing countries. This study was done to identify the Risk factors of tuberculosis treatment failure in the Sistan and Bulochestan province, the high risk region in South-East of Iran. Methods: This case – control study was carried out on 52 tuberculosis patients (smear -positive and category- I therapy) treated during six months period. Patients with treatment failure were considered as cases and patients with negative smear after 6 months of treatment with anti-tuberculosis (TB) medicines were considered as control group. Demographic, clinical and treatment outcomes were recorded for each patient. The multivariate logistic regression was performed to determine the predictors of treatment failure. Results: Family history of tuberculosis (95% CI: 1-12.56, OR=3.55, P=0.04,), smoking (95% CI:1.58-51.21, OR=9, P=0.01), drug addiction before or during the treatment period (95% CI: 5.28-123.91, OR=25.6, P=0.0001) and low body weight (95% CI:1.05-12.6, OR=3.65, P=0.04) were risk factors for treatment failure. Conclusion: Family history of tuberculosis, weight loss during treatment, smoking and drug addiction, were considered as risk factors for treatment failure in National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTCP) in south-east of Iran.