Determine the factors affecting the time to recovery of children with bacterial meningitis at Jigjiga university referral hospital in the Somali Regional State of Ethiopia: using the parametric shared frailty and AFT models.

BACKGROUND: Neisseria meningitides, Streptococcus pneumonia, and hemophilic influenza type B are frequently linked to bacterial meningitis (BM) in children. It's an infectious sickness that kills and severely mobilizes children. For a variety of reasons, bacterial meningitis remains a global public health concern; most cases and deaths are found in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. Even though vaccination has made BM more preventable, children worldwide are still severely harmed by this serious illness. Age, sex, and co-morbidity are among the risk variables for BM that have been found. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to identify the variables influencing the time to recovery for children with bacterial meningitis at Jigjiga University referral hospital in the Somali regional state of Ethiopia.

METHOD: A retrospective cohort of 535 children with bacterial meningitis who received antibiotic treatment was the subject of this study. Parametric Shared Frailty ty and the AFT model were employed with log likelihood, BIC, and AIC methods of model selection. The frailty models all employed the patients' kebele as a clustering factor.

RESULTS: The number of cases of BM declined in young children during the duration of the 2 year, 11 month study period, but not in the elderly. Streptococcus pneumonia (50%), hemophilic influenza (30.5%), and Neisseria meningitides (15%) were the most frequent causes of BM. The time to recovery of patients from bacteria was significantly influenced by the covariates male patients (ϕ = 0.927; 95% CI (0.866, 0.984); p-value = 0.014), patients without a vaccination history (ϕ = 0.898; 95% CI (0.834, 0.965); P value = 0.0037), and patients who were not breastfeeding (ϕ = 0.616; 95% CI (0.404, 0.039); P-value = 0.024). The recovery times for male, non-breastfed children with bacterial patients are 7.9 and 48.4% shorter, respectively. In contrast to children with comorbidity, the recovery time for children without comorbidity increased by 8.7%.

CONCLUSION: Age group, sex, vaccination status, co-morbidity, breastfeeding, and medication regimen were the main determinant factors for the time to recovery of patients with bacterial meningitis. Patients with co-morbidities require the doctor at Jigjiga University Referral Hospital to pay close attention to them.