Incidence and predictors of mortality among children co-infected with tuberculosis and human immunodeficiency virus at public hospitals in Southern Ethiopia

Tuberculosis and human immune deficiency virus co-infections remained the most common cause of child mortality for the last ten years. Globally, 1.2 million cases of tuberculosis occurred in patients living with HIV/AIDS, of which 1.0 million cases occurred in children. The public health impact of tuberculosis and human immune deficiency virus co-infection among children is high in developing countries and Sub-Saharan Africa accompanied three fourth of the global burden. However, there are limited studies that assess the incidence and predictors of mortality among tuberculosis and human immune deficiency virus co-infected children in Ethiopia. A facility-based retrospective cohort study was conducted at Public hospitals in Southern Ethiopia with a total of 286 randomly selected records of ART enrolled children from 1st January 2009 to 31.sup.st December 2018. Data were entered into Epi Data version 3.1 and exported to STATA version 14 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariable Cox proportional hazards model was fitted to identify the predictors of mortality. Variables that had a p-value