Time to death and its determinant factors of visceral leishmaniasis with HIV co-infected patients during treatment period admitted at Metema hospital, Metema, Ethiopia: a hospital-based cross-sectional study design.

Background: Visceral leishmaniasis is caused by the parasites Leishmania donovani spices complex that can spread to internal organs and the disease is fatal with a fatality rate of nearly 100% if left untreated. Visceral Leishmania-HIV (HIV1) coinfection disease is a new clinical form of leishmaniasis very serious disease in the endemic part of the world. It also served as the primary cause of death in the lowlands of Ethiopia with the endemic Humara and Metema that are located near the Sudanese border.

Methods: A total of 153 visceral leishmaniases with HIV co-infection secondary data was taken from the medical chart of patients from January 2015 to January 2021 and a hospital-based cross-sectional study design was carried out to retrieve relevant information. The data entered by SPSS and analysed using STATA version 14 and R4.2.1 statistical software packages using a non-parametric Model, semi-parametric Cox proportional hazard survival models at 5% significance level.

Result: Among the total visceral leishmaniasis with HIV co-infected patients 3.27% were females and 96.73% were males, 19 (12.42%) patients died and 134(87.58%) patients were censored. The Cox proportional hazard model result indicates that severe acute malnutrition, baseline CD4+ cell count ≥100, and underweight significantly contributed to the survival time of a patient. Cox proportional hazard model shows that severe acute malnutrition (HR=4.40027, 95% CI= 2.455061 262.7934, P-value=0.007), baseline CD4+cell count ≥100 (HR=0.2714623, 95% CI= 0.0764089 0.9644395, P-value=0.044), and Underweight (HR=4.678169, 95% CI= 1.970097 11.10872, P-value=0.040) significantly contributed to a shorter survival time.

Conclusion: Visceral leishmaniases with HIV co-infected patients show a large number of deaths occurred in the earlier days of treatment this implies that Visceral leishmaniasis accelerates HIV replication and disease progression death. The researcher suggests that people be aware of the burden posed by those risk factors and knowledgeable about the diseases. So, the researcher recommended that to health workers implement primary health care in those patients and careful consideration of a neglected parasitic disease.