Abstract:
Tuberculosis (TB) is still a public health problem and amongst the top ten leading causes of
death. The objective of this study is to analyze survival time of TB patients and identify the
risk factors that influence their survival in Pawe hospital during the treatment period. The
data for this study are obtained from Tuberculosis patients registered book during September
2009 to January2010 under DOTS at the health centers in Pawe hospital. The analytical
methodologies used were the Kaplan-Meier to estimate the survival time and Cox’s
regression model was employed to identify the covariates that have a statistical significant
effect on the survival longevity of Tuberculosis patients. The descriptive analysis indicates
that out of the total 637 individuals, 99(15.54%) are death cases, of which a death proportion
seems Category I Tuberculosis patients have the highest death proportion (31.29%) as
compared to the other two groups while Category III Tuberculosis patients show the
lowest death rate occurred within eight month of Tuberculosis treatment. The estimation of
the model parameters was done by partial maximum likelihood procedures. The multivariate
analysis of Cox regression model gives that Age, Category (patient category), Initial weight,
Localization of Tuberculosis and HIV status have statistically significant effects on the
survival longevity of Tuberculosis patients. The survival rates in this study were found to be
68.71%, 84.62% and 89.44% in categories I, II and III, respectively. On the other hand Sex,
Marital status, and History of previous treatment have no impact on the survival experience
of tuberculosis patients. The study shows that 84.5% of the patients were still alive at the end
of eight months of anti-tuberculosis treatment. Based on the result of the study different
factors are identified for the death of tuberculosis Patients recommended that Tuberculosis
co-infected people should have awareness about the hazard of the risk factors identified in
this study and Health workers should be cautious when a patient has lower Initial weight
and HIV-positive status. When this is the case appropriate clinical and non-clinical
measures like medicine and support (can be home-based) should be provided
