To identify risk factors associated with death in infants admitted to neonatal intensive care unit of Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital. Retrospective record review included all records of neonates pediatrics ward from January 1 2016to January 1 2017 at Felege Hiwot Referral hospital study. a total of 300 neonates were admitted during the study period. This is a study based on information from medical records regarding newborns admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital. The outcome, either discharge or death, was the dependent variable. The independent variables were maternal and gestational variables: maternal age, HIV status, residence, place of delivery, age of admission and delivery mode; the newborn variables: birth weight, gestational age, Apgar score in the first and ten minutes of life, multiple birth, and gender;. A model was built with three hierarchical levels for the survival analysis by the Cox model; the software Stata v12 was used, and the final model had variables with p value <0.05. The risks were estimated by the effect measure known as hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence intervals. New born transferred to other services during the hospitalization were excluded from the study. Among 300 newborns, 75 (25%) were died. In the final model, only the variables of gestational age at moderate preterm level (HR 0.277, 95% CI 0.119-0.647), gestational age at late preterm level (HR 0.191, 95% CI 0.082-0.448) birth weight (HR 1.163, 95% CI 0.059-0.453), sex (HR 2.368, 95% CI 1.174-4.776) and multiple birth (HR 0.449, 95% CI 0.227-.888) are the most significant variables for the survival life neonates. Main outcome measures: Birth weight and gestational age specific survival admitted for neonatal care. Conclusions: The most appropriate statistical model among various parametric frailty models which was described the time to recovery from survival of preterm neonates who were diagnosed in Felege Hiwot Referral hospital, January 01, 2016 to January 30, 2017 is the Weibull- Gamma - frailty model. Gestational age (p-value=0.003), weight of neonates (p-value=0.001), sex of neonates (p- value=0.016) and multiple pregnancies (p-value=0.021) have a significant effect for the survivals of preterm neonates admitted in neonatal intensive care unit. Key words: Weibull gamma frailty model; preterm neonates; Hospital; Neonatal intensive care unit.