Abstract

Background: Pneumonia is the number one largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide and it kills about 2,500 children every day. It is most prevalent in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and it is a leading single disease killing under-five children in Ethiopia. The aim of this study was to examine the risk factors of time to death of under-five pneumonia patients.

Methods: Retrospective study was conducted from September 2016 up to August 2017 and included 281 underfive pneumonia patients. The Cox PH and parametric survival models (Weibull, log-logistic and lognormal) were used and compared for examining survival rate of pneumonia patients.

Results: From out of 281 participants in the study 16.73% were died and 83.27% were alive at the end of the study. Based on AIC value the Weibull model is selected as the good model to fit pneumonia dataset compared to candidate models. The results implied that Sex, residence, Season of Diagnosis, Comorbidity, Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), Patient refer status and Patient to Nurse Ratio (PNR) were major factors related to survival time of under-five pneumonia patients in these study.

Conclusion: The patients from urban and patients admitted to hospital when Patient Nurse Ratio (PNR) was small were prolong timing death of under-five pneumonia patients, while Spring and summer season, comorbidity and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) were shorten timing of death of under- five pneumonia patients. The concerned body should work on these factors to decrease the death of under- five due to pneumonia.

Keywords: Pneumonia; Under-five; Parametric models; Risk factors