BackgroundTuberculosis/HIV co-infection is a bidirectional and synergistic combination of two very important pathogens in public health. To date, there have been limited clinical data regarding mortality rates among tuberculosis/HIV co-infected patients and the impact of antiretroviral therapy on clinical outcomes in Ethiopia. This study assessed the incidence and predictors of tuberculosis/HIV co-infection mortality in Southwest Ethiopia.MethodsA retrospective cohort study collated tuberculosis/HIV data from Jimma University Teaching Hospital for the period of September 2010 and August 2012. The data analysis used proportional hazards cox regression model at P value of ≤ 0.05 in the final model.ResultsFifty-five (20.2 %) patients died during the study period and 272 study participants contributed 3 082.7 person month observations. Factors including: being aged between 35–44 years (AHR = 2.9; 95 % CI: 1.08–7.6), being a female sex worker (AHR = 9.1; 95 % CI: 2.7–30.7), being bed ridden as functional status (AHR = 3.2; 95 % CI: 1.2–8.7), and being at World Health Organization HIV disease stages 2 (AHR = 0.2; 95 % CI: 0.06–0.5), 3(AHR = 0.3; 95 % CI: 0.1–0.8) and 4(AHR = 0.2; 95 % CI: 0.04–0.55) were significant predictors of mortality for tuberculosis/HIV co-infected patients.ConclusionsContrary to our expectations, the World Health Organization (WHO) HIV disease stage 1 was found to be a significant predictor of mortality. Higher mortality rates were observed in WHO disease stage 1 patients compared to patients in stages 2, 3 and 4. The current study also confirmed and reaffirmed known significant predictors of the mortality for tuberculosis/HIV co-infected patients including being 35–44 years, being a female sex worker and being bed ridden functional status. The occurrence of high death rate among tuberculosis/HIV co-infected cases needs actions to reduce this poor outcome.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40249-016-0202-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Ethiopia has long history of food insecurity and nutritional problems affecting large proportion of the population caused by successive droughts. Despite of different interventions to tackle the problem there is no explicit data showing treatment outcome of the children generally in Ethiopia and specifically in the study area. Institutional based general prospective cohort study was employed. The respondents were 332 children of 6-59 months age admitted to Outpatient therapeutic program (OTP) providing health facilities and their mothers /caregivers from January-April, 2012. Data was analyzed using SPSS. Kaplan Meir (KM) curve, log rank test and proportional hazards Cox model were performed. The bivariate and adjusted hazard rate and its 95%Confidence interval were estimated. Out of 332 children, 255 children (76.8%) have recovered. Fifty-eight children (17.5%) defaulted from the program. Factors significantly associated with good recovery were children whose mothers travel below 2 hours to the health facility ,male children ,children with baseline WFH of >60% and children from mothers whose age at first marriage is >18 years. Efforts to trace defaulters from OTP should be emphasized and strengthened. To overcome the high length of stay and low weight gain among patients in the OTP, stakeholders need to consider and give emphasis to the identified determinants of the treatment outcomes to achieve fully effective and sustainable program.

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