Effectiveness of smoking cessation intervention based on the ABC Approach in patients with TB.

Setting: Urban setting in the Philippines.

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of the ABC Approach developed by The Union as a tobacco-smoking cessation intervention for TB patients at a primary healthcare level in an urban setting in the Philippines.

Design: We set up an intervention group whose patients with TB received the ABC approach and a control group of patients with TB receiving only routine health education in Manila, The Philippines. We collected smoking status and the domestic secondhand-smoking (SHS) status data from patients with TB at months 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12. TB treatment outcome data were also collected.

Results: Patients with TB (n = 2,174) were enrolled upon TB registration. Smoking rates were consistently low in the intervention group (3.9% vs. 8.7% at Month 6). The odds ratios of both tobacco-smoking status and domestic SHS status in the intervention group were significantly lower than those in the control group (tobacco-smoking status: P < 0.001, domestic SHS status: P < 0.01). TB treatment success rates were similar between the groups (85.0% vs. 87.3%; P = 0.201).

Conclusion: The ABC approach successfully reduced tobacco-smoking rates, maintained low domestic SHS rates and TB treatment success rates in the Philippines.