Abstract:
Drug and substance abuse is a serious health problem in many countries. In Kenya drug
abuse is one of the leading causes of mortality. The government and other stakeholders
have made efforts to fight the problem of drug abuse. However there are no significant
results that have been drawn from these efforts. This study sought to model the survival
rate of drug users in relation to drug and substance abuse. The objectives of this study
were to formulate survival model for drug users using a Kaplan-Meier and Cox
proportional hazards model, to establish the recovery rates of drug users under
medication, to perform sensitivity analysis on the model parameters to determine the
significant predictors of drug use and compare survival rates based on significant
predictors. The dependent variable was survival time to recovery of the subject and the
independent variables were age, gender, residence, marital status, job status, mode of
drug abused and the type of drug abused. The study used secondary data on drug use
obtained from Mathari National Hospital. Data was collected from specialized registers
containing the drug users’ medical information provided by the hospital. Data was fitted
to the survival model using R statistical software. Kaplan-Meier and Cox Proportional
Hazard methods were used to formulate a survival rate model for drug users. Sensitivity
analysis of the model parameters was performed to determine an optimal model for the
study. Kaplan-Meier model was used to establish the rate of recovery of drug users.
The optimal model revealed that age, gender, marital status and job status were
significant predictors .Female drug users had higher survival rates (80.95%) compared
to male drug users (19.05%).The overall survival rate was 36.37% recovery rate
increased with progression of treatment. The study recommended that campaigns
against drug abused should be more focused towards treating male subjects since they
have lower survival rates compared to female subjects.