Assessment of Affordability and Associated Factors of Medicines to Treat Diabetes Mellitus in Public Hospitals Outpatients of Bale Zone, South-Eastern Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia 2018

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