Determinants of death among tuberculosis patients in a semi urban diagnostic and treatment centre of Bafoussam, West Cameroon: a retrospective case-control study

INTRODUCTION: Tuberculosis (TB) remains a worldwide public health problem with 8.6 millions of new cases and 1.3 millions of death annually. Despite the progress recorded in fighting against this disease in the recent years, Africa is still not on the track to achieve the objective to reduce by half the death rate due to this disease by 2015. METHODS: A case-control study was conducted on data of patients admitted for tuberculosis between 1996 and 2011 in the Diagnostic and Treatment Center of Baleng. Cases were patients who died from any cause during anti tuberculosis treatment. Logistic regression model was used to identify factors associated to death. RESULTS: In 4201 patients treated during the study period, 3245 (77.24%) were included in the study. The mean age was 35.9 (SD 14.2) and male represent 62.2% (CI 60.6- 63.9) of them. At the end of the follow up, 2883 patients were successfully treated, 362 died during treatment and 132 (36.5%) deaths occurred during the first two months of TB treatment. HIV positive status, Extra-pulmonary TB, sputum smear-negative pulmonary TB and male sex were significant independent risk factors of death with adjusted odds ratio of 4.8 (CI 3.2- 7.4); 3.0 (CI 1.6- 5.4); 2.7 (CI 1.7- 4.4) and 1.5 (CI 1.0- 2.3) respectively. CONCLUSION: The mortality rate of TB patients undergoing TB treatment remains high. Studies are needed to identify and test efficient interventions of mortality reduction among TB patients in resource limiting settings.