Abstract:
Background: As Diabetes Mellitus is one of the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the
world today and specially in sub Saharan Africa including Ethiopia, there is no data available that
shows the affordability of diabetic medicines and associated factors to the best of investigator’s
knowledge. So the aim of this study was to assess the affordability and associated factors of
medicines prescribed for diabetes mellitus for patients treated in public hospitals outpatients of
Bale zone.
Methods: Facility based cross-sectional study was conducted by using interviewer administered
structured questionnaire to patients for affordability study in four public hospitals: namely Ginnir,
Robe, Delo Mena general hospitals and Goba referral hospital in Bale zone from August 13 –
September 02, 2018. 404 diabetic Patients attending hospitals outpatients were determined by single
population proportion formula and consecutive sampling procedure was employed. The data was
collected on type of medicines, sociodemographic characteristics of the patients and price of
medicine on local language and entered to Epi data version 3.1 for clearance of the error and then
exported to SPSS version 20.1 for analysis. Descriptive statistics, bi-variable and multi-variable
logistics regression analysis was employed. Ethical clearance was obtained from Institutional
review board of Jimma University Institute of Health
Result: The affordability of patients who use injection type medication decreased by the odds of
77% relative to those who use oral medication [AOR=0.23, 95%CI=0.14-0.39]. The affordability
of the patients with educational level primary school is affected(reduced) by the odds of 57% with
[AOR=0.43,95% CI=0.23,0.79], while the affordability of patients with no formal education is
more affected by the odds of 0.72[AOR=0.28, 95%CI=0.15-0.52].
Conclusions: The study revealed that majority of patients do not afford the medicine and the
affordability of diabetic patients to buy their medicine is affected by the type of medicine and level
of education. Therefore, this required intensive efforts by government and partners as well as
hospital managements to achieve the affordability of diabetes medicine
