Abstract

  Cancer is the second leading cause of death and disability around the world. More number of people now die of cancer than from all cases of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria put together. Households with a cancer patient experienced significantly higher Out of pocket (OOP) expenditure per capita as compared with households having a non-cancer patient. The likelihood of experiencing catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) in case of cancer was 160% more than for any other disease in India. In our study of Cancer patients, average annual out of pocket expenditure per patient was Rs.144264.26. It was observed that the direct medical costs including chemotherapy charges, investigations charges, surgery charges, hospitalization charges and radiotherapy charges accounted for 78% of the total direct costs. The average annual cost of chemotherapy per patient was 55% of the total average annual expenditure per patient in rupees. The direct non-medical costs including transportation charges, lodging charges and miscellaneous charges accounted for a significant portion of expenditure in our study, 21.93% of the total direct cost.

Keywords: Cancer; Expenditure; Health Finances; Cost

References

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Citation

Citation: Abas Khan., et al. “Out of Pocket Cost of Cancer Treatment: A Study from a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital of North India". Acta Scientific Women's Health 3.1 (2021): 02-04.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Abas Khan., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.