Zelalem G. Dessie

University of KwaZulu-Natal | ukzn · Department of Statistics

Background Mortality rates of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) continue to rise across the world. The impact of several risk factors on coronavirus mortality has been previously reported in several meta‐analyses limited by small sample sizes. In this systematic review, we aimed to summarize available findings on the association between comorbidi...

Background Childbearing under the age of 20 is referred to as teenage childbearing. Compared to high-income countries, it is significantly higher in low-income countries. Adolescent childbearing is influenced by a number of variables, including economic, demographic, and social factors, and these vary geographically. Thus, this study aimed to deter...

Background It has been recognized that HIV-related stigma hinders efforts in testing, treatment, and prevention. In this systematic review, we aimed to summarize available findings on the association between HIV-related stigma and age, social support, educational status, depression, employment status, wealth index, gender, residence, knowledge abou...

The state of moderate and severe food insecurity in Ethiopia has not been significantly reduced for a long time due to cultural, natural, and manmade shocks, which cover most part of the country with considerable magnitude and have adverse effects on the health and economy. This temporal evolution of the wider geographic distribution of the food in...

Introduction Cardiovascular diseases are a class of heart and blood vessel-related illnesses. In Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia, preventable heart disease continues to be a significant factor, contrasting with its presence in developed nations. Therefore, the objective of the study was to assess the prevalence of death due to cardiac diseas...

Background Teenage childbearing is a common issue for young people’s sexual and reproductive health in the world, particularly in low-income countries, and affects teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19. According to several academics, adolescent pregnancy accounts for the majority of Ethiopia’s population increase, and there has been little effor...

Objectives This study aimed to evaluate competing risks and functional ability measures among patients who had a stroke. Design A joint model comprising two related submodels was applied: a cause-specific hazard submodel for competing drop-out and stroke-related death risks, and a partial proportional odd submodel for longitudinal functional abili...

Introduction Living in poverty, especially in low-income countries, are more affected by cardiovascular disease. Unlike the developed countries, it remains a significant cause of preventable heart disease in the Sub-Saharan region, including Ethiopia. According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Health statement, around 40,000 cardiac patients have been...

Background Food insecurity and vulnerability in Ethiopia are historical problems due to natural- and human-made disasters, which affect a wide range of areas at a higher magnitude with adverse effects on the overall health of households. In Ethiopia, the problem is wider with higher magnitude. Moreover, this geographical distribution of this challe...

Background Cancer is a chronic disease brought on by mutations to the genes that control our cells’ functions and become the most common cause of mortality and comorbidities. Thus, this study aimed to assess the comprehensive and common mortality-related risk factors of lung cancer using more than thirty scientific research papers. Methods Possibl...

Abstract Background Ideal number of children (INC) is the number of children that a woman or man would have if they could go back to the time when they did not have any children and could choose accurately the number of children to have in their total life. Despite numerous studies on the prevalence and associated factors of the ideal number of chi...

Introduction Numerous natural and man-made factors have afflicted Ethiopia, and millions of people have experienced food insecurity. The current cut-points of the WFP food consumption score (FCS) have limitations in measuring the food insecurity level of different feeding patterns due to the diversified culture of the society. The aim of this study...

Introduction Hypertension is a widespread condition when the blood’s force on the artery walls is extremely high to develop adverse health effects. This paper aimed to jointly model the longitudinal change of blood pressures (systolic and diastolic) and time to the first remission of hypertensive outpatients receiving treatment. Methods A retrospe...

Objective This study aimed to determine whether the birth interval changes differently over time among women in Ethiopia and whether the change depends on women, children and household characteristics measured at the last visit. Methods Longitudinal study design was implemented based on the data obtained from the 2019 Ethiopia Mini Demographic and...

Household food insecurity remains highly prevalent in developing countries (including in Ethiopia) and it has been recognized as a serious public health problem. Several factors such as demographic, economic, social, and clinical factors influence household food insecurity, and these vary geographically. In this work, we investigate the geographica...

Background : Little is known about the clinical care, utilisation of medicines and risk factors associated with mortality amongst the private health insured population with COVID-19 in South Africa. Methods : This was a retrospective cross-sectional study using claims data of patients with confirmed COVID-19. Socio-demographics, comorbidities, sev...

Background Undernutrition is the main cause of morbidity and mortality of children aged under five and it is an important indicator of countries’ economic and health status. Limited attention is given to research papers conducted in Ethiopia that identified and estimates the determinants of under-five anthropometric indicators by considering their...

The aim of this study is to model the progression of HIV/AIDS disease of an individual patient under ART follow-up using semi-Markov processes. Recorded hospital data were obtained for a cohort of 710 patients at Felege-Hiwot referral hospital, Ethiopia, who have been under ART follow-up from June 2005 to August 2009. States of the Markov process a...

Background: HIV infected patients may experience many intermediate events including between-event transition throughout their follow up. Through modelling these transitions, we can gain a deeper understanding of HIV disease process and progression and of factors that influence the disease process and progression pathway. In this work, we present t...

Background: Ordinal health longitudinal response variables have distributions that make them unsuitable for many popular statistical models that assume normality. We present a multilevel growth model that may be more suitable for medical ordinal longitudinal outcomes than are statistical models that assume normality and continuous measurements. M...

Introduction: Combination antiretroviral therapy has become the standard care of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected patients and has further led to a dramatically decreased progression probability to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) for patients under such a therapy. However, responses of the patients to this therapy have recorde...

Emerging and re-emerging viral diseases are of great public health concern. The recent emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) related coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in December 2019 in China, which causes COVID-19 disease in humans, and its current spread to several countries, leading to the first pandemic in history to be caused by a coro...

Background: CD4 cell and viral load count are highly correlated surrogate markers of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease progression. In modelling the progression of HIV, previous studies mostly dealt with either CD4 cell counts or viral load alone. In this work, both biomarkers are in included one model, in order to study possible factors...

Background: Patients infected with HIV may experience a succession of clinical stages before the disease diagnosis and their health status may be followed-up by tracking disease biomarkers. In this study, we present a joint multistate model for predicting the clinical progression of HIV infection which takes into account the viral load and CD4 cou...

Background: Longitudinal quality of life (QoL) is an important outcome in many chronic illness studies aiming to evaluate the efficiency of care both at the patient and health system level. Although many QoL studies involve multiple correlated hierarchical outcome measures, very few of them use multivariate modeling. In this work, we modeled the l...

Background: Tuberculosis is one of the world’s most common causes of death in the era of Human immunodeficiency virus. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and associated factors of TB/HIV co-infection. Methods: Hospital based retrospective studies were conducted among adult HIV-positive patients. Logistic regression method and...

The purpose of this study is to model the progression of HIV/AIDS disease of an individual patient under ART follow-up using non-homogeneous semi-Markov processes. The model focuses on the patient's age as a relevant factor to forecast the transitions among the different levels of seriousness of the disease. A sample of 1456 patients was taken from...

Multi-state stochastic models are useful tools for studying complex dynamics such as chronic diseases. The purpose of this study is to determine factors associated with the progression between different stages of the disease and to model the progression of HIV/AIDS disease of an individual patient under ART follow-up using semi-Markov processes. A...

The aim of this study is to model the progression of HIV/AIDS disease of an individual patient under ART follow-up using semi-Markov processes. Recorded hospital data were obtained for a cohort of 710 patients at Felege-Hiwot referral hospital, Ethiopia, who have been under ART follow-up from June 2005 to August 2009. States of the Markov process a...