Emerging Infectious Diseases

Background: HIV is one of the major problems worldwide in health system and this shown by the huge number of HIV infected people. In low income countries, HIV related disease, mainly opportunistic infections, is the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in HIV patients. But high income countries, non-HIV related disease are on the top as the most common causes of hospital admission in HIV patients as a result of the good awareness and skills of importance good adherence to antiretroviral.
 

Objective: The objective of this study was to identify the causes of admissions and outcome of HIV patients among patient admitted in Internal medicine department of CHUK (Centre universitaire de Kigali) over a one-year period from January 2015 to December 2015.
 

Methods: A retrospective study with quantitative strategy of data analysis, HIV cases were identified from the admission register of medical wards of Internal medicine department of CHUK and the case notes were retrieved from the archive of CHUK and analyzed.
 

Results: There were 153 patients: 101 males and 52 females. Where the youngest was 17 and the oldest was 84 years with a median age is 40. The commonest causes of admission of HIV patients were pulmonary tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, anemia, and malaria with 32%, 13.7% and 3.3% and 3.3% respectively. HIV related admissions were on top 73.86% compare to HIV non-related admissions were 26.14%. Mortality rate in CHUK was 34.6%. The causes of mortality were pulmonary TB, cryptococcal meningitis, 12.4%, 6% respectively.
 

Conclusion: This study showed that HIV patients were admitted in CHUK primarily due to HIV related diseases and they were associated with a high mortality. It shows that HIV is a significant health problem in Rwanda. Therefore, more effort is required to increase public awareness about HIV, to improve patient detection, treatment and follow up, primarily by health care providers.