OBJECTIVES Children younger than 12 months of age are eligible for childhood vaccines through the public health system in Guinea-Bissau. To limit open vial wastage, a restrictive vial opening policy has been implemented; 10-dose measles vaccine vials are only opened if six or more children aged 9-11 months are present at the vaccination post. Consequently, mothers who bring their child for meas...

OBJECTIVE To assess productivity costs incurred by rheumatoid arthritis, comprising paid as well as household productivity costs, from a societal perspective, using different methods. METHODS A questionnaire on productivity, including items of the Health and Labour Questionnaire, was completed by 576 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (mean disease duration seven years). The friction cost (FC...

Background There are more than 40 Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) sites in 19 different countries. The running costs of HDSS sites are high. The financing of HDSS activities is of major importance, and adding external health surveys to the HDSS is challenging. To investigate the ways of improving data quality and collection efficiency in the Nouna HDSS in Burkina Faso, the sta...

BACKGROUND Studies on costs incurred by patients for tuberculosis (TB) care are limited as these costs are reported as averages, and the economic impact of the costs is estimated based on average patient/household incomes. Average expenditures do not represent the poor because they spend less on treatment compared to other economic groups. Thus, the extent to which TB expenditures risk sending ...

Pushed by ever-rising health care costs, changes in health care systems, and modern technology, there is even a stronger need for finding blood-based biomarkers for diagnosis, disease progression and assessing response to therapy for all medical conditions that are clinically diagnosed. The days of relying solely on patient history, subjective scales/measures, and human interpretation of studie...

BACKGROUND One common challenge to social systems is achieving equity in financial contributions and preventing financial loss. Because of the large and unpredictable nature of some costs, achieving this goal in the health system presents important and unique problems. The present study investigated the Household Financial Contributions (HFCs) to the health system. METHODS The study investiga...

BACKGROUND Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) incidence in Germany is low, but management of contacts to prevent subsequent cases still requires resources. Local public health authorities (LHA) advise antibiotic post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and vaccination to close contacts as defined in national guidance. We aimed to audit implementation of recommendations for IMD public health management...

Poverty and illness are intertwined. It is a well-documented fact that poverty leads to ill-health. In every society, morbidity and mortality are higher among the poor (Wagstaff 2002). Determinants of lower health status include nutrition, environment, education, lifestyle and access to health care. Less is known about how illness itself can lead to poverty in developing countries. There are tw...