Low prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency at baseline in TB-HIV co-infected (41%) and HIV (35%)-only infected patients from Uganda has been reported.[39] Likewise, only 9.2% and 43.6% of HIV patients from Tanzania were vitamin D-deficient and -insufficient, respectively.[40] The finding of a high prevalence of SVDD in Ethiopian HIV patients might be because our study population consisted of very ill patients with low CD4 cell count (<200 cells/mm3) at baseline and a majority presented HIV stage 3 or 4 indicating progression to AIDS (Table 1). Here, CD4 is linked to vitamin D deficiency.