Socio-Economic Characteristics of Urban Tuberculosis Areas in Petaling, Selangor: A Current Spatial Exploratory Scenario

Abstract

Abstract World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated one-third of the world population as potentially infected with tuberculosis (TB) in 2020. Almost nine (9) million people are detected with TB with approximately two (2) million deaths every year. Selangor state reported among the highest cases of current TB trend in Malaysia. Poverty, immunosuppressive and co-morbidities would relate to the recent TB scenario and urban socioeconomic status (SES) in the state. The study was conducted to exploratory analyse the contemporary effects of SES on the disease in Petaling using a geospatial approach. The main SES factors applied in this study are level of job, income, and education, while Empirical Bayesian Kriging (EBK) of geostatistical interpolation and correlation analysis method were utilised to visualize and estimate the SES-based risk index map and determine the possible socio-economic characteristics. Based on a five likert scale and index method, the risk map was categorised into proposed five (5) classes from Class 1 (blue = very low risk) to Class 5 (red = very high risk). The overall risk map was suggested in a Class 3 (medium-low level) as closely consistent with the correlation analysis (r = 0.37), suggesting that both TB cases and SES factors increased in response to each other but have a medium - weak direct implication. The result has shown that overall SES factor does not greatly affect the local TB cases in 2017, but further study need to be explored on the other potential mediating variables.