Research Article Characteristics and Treatment Outcomes of (Transfer Out) TB Patients after Crosschecking Registers at Four Hospitals of Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia: 2011-2015 Haftamu Hailekiros , 1 Mahmud Abdulkader Mahmud, 1 and Alemayehu Bayray Kahsay 2 1 Mekelle University College of Health Sciences, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, 1871, Ethiopia 2 Mekelle University College of Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, 1871, Ethiopia Correspondence should be addressed to Hafamu Hailekiros; habtkinf19@gmail.com Received 16 January 2019; Revised 13 May 2019; Accepted 4 June 2019; Published 24 June 2019 Academic Editor: Jos´ e R. Lapa e Silva Copyright © 2019 Hafamu Hailekiros et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Globally, transferring TB patients to another health unit for treatment continuation is common trend while posing challenges for proper treatment outcomes monitoring. National guidelines indicated the importance of incorporating the treatment outcomes of those cases by the transferring unit when performing annual cohort analysis. However, in most instances, this is not taken into account. Tis study was conducted to determine the characteristics and treatment outcomes of ‘transfer out’ TB cases during the time period between 2011 and 2015 at four Hospitals of Tigray: Ethiopia. Initial data was extracted from TB treatment logbooks of transferring units using standardize checklist that were followed by a visit to each of the receiving units. Te generated data were entered and analyzed using SPSS v. 22.0. Descriptive statistics were computed. P-value less than 0.05 were considered statistically signifcant. A total of 143 TB patients were transferred out during the specifed time period whereas 73.4% (105/143) patients were traced and classifed as “arrivals”. From these, more than three-quarters, 87.6% (92/105), of patients had a successful treatment outcome (5.7% cured and 81.9% completed treatment) while 13/105 (12.3%) had an unsuccessful outcome (2.8% defaulted, 5.7% died, 1.9% failed, and 1.9% transferred out). However, none of the transferring unit received and traced status of the cases. Terefore, regular monitoring is needed to improve the existing communication gap. 1. Introduction Tuberculosis (TB) is worldwide public health problem, more importantly; its burden remains to be enormous in devel- oping countries. In Ethiopia, the TB case notifcation and detection rate are improving over the years [1]. According to the Ethiopian national TB guideline, all patients either clinically judged or bacteriologically confrmed should start treatment without delay under Directly Observed Treatment- short course (DOTS) [2]. However, it is fairly common for TB patients to seek treatment services at health facility other than where they initially diagnosed [3]. A transfer out patient (TO) is a patient who has been transferred out at any time during treatment to continue treatment at another facility [4]. Such intracountry move- ment of patients, from one treatment unit to another, for various reasons poses challenge for efective implementation of TB control programs worldwide [5]. Reports depicted that there are substantial variation interims of the proportion of TO patients from one country to another; for instance, in Sub-Saharan Africa countries it ranges from 1% to 26% [6, 7], while higher rates, 31% to 66%, have been previously reported from Ethiopia [8–10]. A research study conducted in Gondor, Ethiopia, also showed that 42% of TB patients were transferred out between 2003 and 2008 from a University hospital to continue their treatment at nearby health units [9]. Te National TB program (NTP) guidelines indicate the necessity of incorporating treatment outcome of transfer out TB patients and reporting regularly to the national surveillance system by the transferring unit, as this unit notifed and initiated treatment for this patient. However, essentially this is not done in most settings [11–13]. Moreover, Hindawi Tuberculosis Research and Treatment Volume 2019, Article ID 1761694, 6 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/1761694