- Abstract -

Since 1994 various international institutions and organizations funded several projects in the field of tuberculosis control and prevention. Among these are worth mentioning World Health Organization, Soros Foundation, World Bank, USAID and the most recent and substantial the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. These projects included population information, education and communication campaigns, training for medical personnel and roma health mediators, provision of second line drugs and support for policy elaboration (the national tuberculosis programme, national strategy for tuberculosis control, and others). A measure of these projects success is the population knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding tuberculosis. These were estimated using opinion questionnaires applied in 2007 and 2009. The article presents the 2009 study results and discusses comparatively some essential aspects from 2007 and 2009. Both studies show a reasonable level of tuberculosis knowledge and also the attitudes and practices are in a positive register. These studies can not reveal the causal link between the international funds and the population knowledge, attitudes and practices but can measure these dimensions to which without doubt the international programmes along with the national government contribution and the effort of the tuberculosis network had a sizable contribution. Unfortunately similar data from the early 90s are missing, but the high tuberculosis incidence of that time suggests a low level of them.
 

Key words: Tuberculosis, international programmes, knowledge, attitudes, practices, population.
 

Abbreviations
GFATM – Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
TB – Tuberculosis