OBJECTIVE Tanzania has a policy of free provision of inpatient care for young children in order to promote timely access and thus reduce the current levels of mortality. However, little is known about out-of-pocket costs that may be incurred by families in seeking care for sick children. We conducted this study to identify the magnitude of these costs in relation to family income. METHODS Fiv...

OBJECTIVES To determine changes in out-of-pocket expenditure on prescription medicines for Australian patients, and how patient expenditure compares with other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. METHODS We examined out-of-pocket expenditure on prescription medicines by patients in Australia between 1970 and 2007, and between Australia and 15 other OECD co...

BACKGROUND Many health systems in Africa are funded primarily through out-of-pocket payments. Out-of-pocket payments prevent people from seeking care, can result to catastrophic health spending and lead to impoverishment. This paper estimates the burden of out-of-pocket payments in Kenya; the incidence and intensity of catastrophic health care expenditure and the effect of health spending on na...

India launched the 'Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana' (RSBY) health insurance scheme for the poor in 2008. Utilising 3 waves (1999-2000, 2004-05 and 2011-12) of household level data from nationally representative surveys of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) (N = 346,615) and district level RSBY administrative data on enrolment, we estimated causal effects of RSBY on out-of-pocket exp...

OBJECTIVE To investigate changes in the expenditure of giving birth in health-care facilities in rural China during 1998-2007, to examine the financial burden on households, particularly poor ones, and to identify factors associated with out-of-pocket expenditure. METHODS Cross-sectional data on births between 1998 and 2007 were obtained from national household surveys conducted in 2003 and 2...

OBJECTIVE To estimate out-of-pocket costs and the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure in people admitted to hospital with acute coronary syndromes in Asia. METHODS Participants were enrolled between June 2011 and May 2012 into this observational study in China, India, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. Sites were required to enrol a minimum of 10 consecuti...

Background & objectives In India, health expenditure accounts for less than 5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product and the level of out-of-pocket (OOP) spending is 69.5 per cent of total health expenditures. OOP expenditure exacerbates poverty and has a negative impact on equity and can increase the risk of vulnerable groups slipping into poverty. This study was conducted to estimate the OOP ...

introduction all nations are striving for development. economic development is one of the main parts of development process, but not all of it. populations health is one of the main factors of economic development, and child’s mortality is one of the main factors of population health status. the aim of this study is investigating the role of socioeconomic disparties in under 5 mortality in east...

INTRODUCTION The overall mortality rate for cancer has declined in Australia. However, socioeconomic inequalities exist and the out-of-pocket costs incurred by patients in Australia are high compared with some European countries. There is currently no readily available data set to provide a systematic means of measuring the out-of-pocket costs incurred by patients with cancer within Australia. ...