Abstract:

Objective To understand and analyze the situation of tuberculosis (TB) control volunteers and their activities in Heilongjiang, so as to provide reference for better organizing volunteers and carrying out activities in future.Methods The basic information of volunteers and the activities carried out from 2013 to 2017 in Heilongjiang were collected from the “Annual Reports on Volunteer’s Activities” of the “Report of millions of volunteers tuberculosis control knowledge dissemination plan” reported by TB control institutions of 13 prefectures (cities) and 106 counties (districts). The personnel composition, publicity methods, and coverage of the volunteers who participated in the TB control activities in our province were analyzed. Excel was used to input data. Chi-square test for trend was applied to analyze all kinds of count data of volunteers within five years. The difference was considered as statistical significance if P<0.05.Results There were a total of 65 382 TB control volunteers participated in activities in 2013-2017, and the number of volunteer recruited was increasing year by year, 7374 in 2013, 9254 in 2014, 12 144 in 2015, 16568 in 2016, and 20042 in 2017. These volunteers were mainly young people aged 18 to 50 (62.74%, 41020/65382), female (57.62%, 37673/65382), Han people (96.76%, 63265/65382), urban dwellers (79.60%, 52044/65382), people with an education background of university or above (43.50%, 28443/65382). For the occupations of volunteers, students (29.78%, 19472/65382) and medical personnel (22.80%, 14905/65382) accounted more than others, while unemployed people (3.96%, 2592/65382) was the least. The differences of the distributions of gender, age, nationality, region, occupation, and education level in 2013-2017 were statistically significant ( {\chi }_{\mathrm{trend}}^2 values were 227.14, 452.39, 629.18, 1812.90, 2758.34 and 3431.39 respectively, all P values were 0.000). The most activities were on field publicity (57.98%, 20446/35267), followed by online publicity (19.29%, 6804/35267). The scale of publicity activities less than 30 persons accounted for 45.03% (15964/35450), 30 to 100 persons accounted for 31.26% (11081/35450). The differences of the distributions of publicity methods and scale of activities in 2013-2017 were statistically significant ( {\chi }_{\mathrm{trend}}^2 values were 6395.67 and 3112.02 respectively, all P values were 0.000). Conclusion The volunteers recruitment and activities carried out in Heilongjiang have achieved good results from 2013 to 2017, while it needs to be further improved in many aspects.

Key words: Tuberculosis, Volunteer program, Health education, Health services research, Heilongjiang Province