Abstracto

Clinical characteristics of COVD-19 related deaths in Ethiopia

Menbeu Sultan

Background: Since December 2019 COVID 19 have claimed nearly 900, 000 lives and more than a thousand lives in Ethiopia. Since COVID-19 spreads quickly, highly contagious, and can be fatal in severe cases. Analysis of deaths related with it is important in an effort to combat the increasing number of deaths.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the clinical characteristics of diseased patients with COVID 19 RT PCR result in Ethiopia.

Methods: Hospital based multi-center cross-sectional study was conducted using chart review of deceased patients. Since the numbers of COVID-19 related deaths were limited, all consecutive COVID 19 related hospital deaths were analyzed. The data was entered into and analyzed using SPSS Windows version 25.0. Descriptive statistics was used to elaborate the data collected from the survey.

Result: A total of 92 deceased patient charts were analyzed. Of these patients 65 (71%) were male. Age ranged from 17 to 92 years (mean age being 59 years). On arrival vital signs, 60.5% of them have hypoxia, 49% have tachycardia and only 32 % of patients had fever. Three fourth of the patients 64/85 had at least one comorbidities. DM where the commonest comorbidity, 445.9%, followed by hypertension 23/85 (27%) and HIV/ AIDS 15/85 (17.5%).

Conclusion: Most of the COVID 19 deaths have comorbidities where DM is the commonest comorbidity. In addition, this research revealed non COVID 19 diseases like AIDS defining illness are contributing to the increasing burden of COVID 19 deaths in Ethiopia.

Keywords

Morphofunctional zones, 6 cambial cells, Scr and Rho proteins, Cancer, Aging