BACKGROUND Health policy makers are concerned about protecting people from catastrophic health expenditures and subsequent impoverishment. This study aimed to describe the magnitude and distribution of catastrophic health expenditures in Kermanshah western Iran. METHODS In this descriptive study, during May 2008, 189 households were chosen by "Systematic Random sampling" among the community ...

BACKGROUND The social health insurance coverage is relatively high in Mongolia; however, escalation of out-of-pocket payments for health care, which reached 41 % of the total health expenditure in 2011, is a policy concern. The aim of this study is to analyse the incidence of catastrophic health expenditures and to measure the rate of impoverishment from health care payments under the social he...

introduction: child mortality indices are key element that reflects health status of societies and inform policy makers to take suitable policies to reduce them. this study was performed to examine the main determinants of under-5 mortality rate (u5mr) in oecd countries in two cross-sections, 2010 and 2013, and the results of them was compared. material and methods: this was a cross- sectional ...

BACKGROUND Social systems are dealing with the challenge of achieving fairness in the distribution of financial burden and protecting the risk of financial loss. The purpose of this paper is to present a trend analysis for the indicators related to fairness in healthcare's financial burden in rural and urban population of Iran during the eight years period of 2003 to 2010. METHODS We used the...

background india’s health sector witnessed some major policy changes in 1990s that aimed at making health services more accessible to the population.   methods in this paper, i tried to present some preliminary results of the significant changes that occurred between 1995/6 and 2004, especially in relation to the question of access to healthcare for the poor and rural population using data from...

BACKGROUND Excessive healthcare payments can impede access to health services and also disrupt the welfare of households with no financial protection. Health insurance is expected to offer financial protection against health shocks. Ghana began the implementation of its National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in 2004. The NHIS is aimed at removing the financial barrier to healthcare by limiting...

BACKGROUND Fairness in financial contribution for health was determined by WHO (World Health Report, 2000) as the third goal of health systems which is measured by fairness in financial contribution index (FFCI). The aim of this study was to estimate FFCI and quantify extent of catastrophic household heath expenditures. METHODS We conducted a descriptive study during May 2008. Subjects were c...

BACKGROUND Inequality in health services access and utilization are influenced by out-of-pocket health expenditures in many low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Various antecedents such as social factors, poor health and economic factors are proposed to direct the choice of health care service use and incurring out-of-pocket payments. We investigated the association of these factors with ou...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the frequency of catastrophic expenditures for emergency obstetric care, explore its risk factors, and assess the effect of these expenditures on households in the Kayes region, Mali. METHODS Data on 484 obstetric emergencies (242 deaths and 242 near-misses) were collected in 2008-2011. Catastrophic expenditure for emergency obstetric care was assessed at different th...