Cost of asthma on patients and their families attending public hospitals in arsi zone, oromia regional state, Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: - Asthma is one of the leading chronic diseases in the world, imposes large economic burdens on national health care, these ranges from individual to national economy, prevalence continues to increase, and it is estimated that by 2020 asthma will likely affect as many as 400 million people and accounts for 346,000 deaths and 22 million disability-adjusted life years lost each year worldwide. In Nigeria mean annual direct cost of asthma follow-up care was US$368 (±228) per patient per year. Objective: To Assess the cost of Asthma on patients and their families in Arsi Zone Public Hospitals, Oromia region, Ethiopia 2018 Methods: An institution based cross sectional study was conducted. A total of 237 participants were selected by consecutive sampling, which enrolled in survey. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Bottom–up approaches and human capital approach was used to estimate direct costs and indirect costs, respectively, along with patient perspective and prevalence based approach. Data was entered into Epi data3.1 and exported to SPSS version20 for further analysis. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, and median were calculated to describe some parts of the results. Multiple liner regression analysis was employed to analyze the separate effects of the various predictor variables on the cost of treatment. Result: The mean outpatient cost per patient per visit for asthma was Birr 517.91($18.73) .Mean direct outpatient cost was 504.9birr ($18.26) takes largest share when compared with the indirect cost 140.22birr ($5.07).Mean inpatient cost for hospitalized patients was birr 736.67($26.64).The mean direct inpatient cost was 635.04birr ($23) (72.7%direct medical cost and 27.3%direct nonmedical cost).The mean emergency treatment cost was birr 355.43($12.85) Conclusion: This study indicates that the cost of asthma is substantial for both patients and their families. Average direct outpatient cost per visit takes the largest share compared with the indirect counterpart, even more than triple. Average cost of hospitalization for asthma patient per visit is higher than outpatient per visit average cost. Asthma treatment cost is dependent on patient age, family monthly income, and distance from hospital.