Survival and predictors of mortality among HIV-infected adults after initiation of antiretroviral therapy in Eastern Ethiopia Governmental hospitals, from January 2015 to December 2021 (multi-center retrospective follow-up study)

Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV) remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally. It can lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which results in gradual deterioration and failure of the immune system. As the immune system becomes compromised, the patient becomes highly susceptible to life-threatening infection which ends with early death. Even though Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) significantly decreases mortality as a whole, the rate of death is still the highest, especially in the first and second years of ART initiation. The study aims to assess the survival and predictors of mortality among HIV-infected adults after initiation of antiretroviral therapy in Jigjiga City Governmental Hospitals, Eastern Ethiopia. Institution-based Retrospective follow-up study was employed among ART patients from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2021. Data were cleaned and entered in Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to STATA 14 for further analysis. Kaplan-Meier and Log-Rank tests were applied to compare survival differences among categories of different variables. In bi-variable analysis, P-values