Perception of tuberculosis in the Democratic Republic of Congo: wali ya nkumu in the Mai Ndombe district.

To implement effective tuberculosis (TB) control programs, we must first understand the health culture in a given region. The authors organized eight focus group sessions in the Mai Ndombe district in the Democratic Republic of Congo to study the underlying attitudes toward TB and to describe the TB context with special reference to gender differences. They then analyzed the focus group data using a grounded theory design. TB is called "the disease of distance" and is described as a person invading people. Isolation and stigmatization are the methods being used to protect society from the TB threat. The authors observed no gender differences in the collected data.