Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB-RO) is a significant global public health challenge. Indonesia, and especially its capital city Jakarta, is an area with a high burden of TB and TB-RO. Jakarta’s dense population and urban challenges, such as high infection rates, poverty, and health care access problems, exacerbate this problem. Researchers chose to use the term pretreatment attrition to define TB-RO patients who had been diagnosed through TCM examination who did not start treatment in the period specified in this study.
Previous research revealed that elderly age, a history of previous TB treatment, and a long delay in treatment were associated with the incidence of pretreatment attrition.  Understanding these barriers, effective public health strategies and policies are needed to increase TB-RO treatment coverage.