Original Research Article
Year: 2017 | Month: April | Volume: 7 | Issue: 4 | Pages: 360-369
Pre-Diagnosis and Diagnosis Cost Associated before Initiation of Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course Regimen in Urban Pokhara, Nepal
Anup K.C.1, Alex Joseph2, Ritu K.C.3
1Scholar, 2Faculty,
School of Public Health, SRM University, Kattankulathur 603 203, Tamil Nadu, India
3Former Student, School of Health and Allied Sciences, Pokhara University, Nepal
Corresponding Author: Anup K.C.
ABSTRACT
Background: TB is disease that falls disproportionally in low income nation and the poor’s. Many studies were available that assessed the Pre-treatment and treatment cost of TB but none of these literature differentiates pre-diagnosis and diagnosis cost of TB. This study assessed both Pre-diagnosis and Diagnosis cost of Tuberculosis.
Material and Method: An Institutional cross sectional study of all the patients (70) in intensive phase of Urban-DOTS regimen were included in study. Microsoft Excel was used for data entry and cleaning and analysis was done through SPSS version 16.0. P-value less than 0.05 were taken as the cut-off values for Non- Parametric test of statistical significance between the variables.
Results: Of 70 patients, majority were male 46 (65.7%), non-migrants 36 (51.4%), non-poor household member 39 (55.7%) and 55(76%) cope with household income and saving. The Median Pre-diagnosis and Diagnosis cost was $ 74.61 (23.87 – 165.70) and $ 15.38 (5.20 – 187.50) respectively. Total cost for the patients before initiation of DOTS regimen were associated with household income group, diagnostic centre, number of health care provider, and coping mechanisms (P < 0.05).
Conclusion: The median total cost before initiation of DOTS regimen was $ 87.13 (36.336 – 332.00) and accounted 3.45% (0.99 – 9.09) of median annual household income of the patients. The study urges for the medical insurances, medical compensations and active case finding approaches that ultimately reduce the cost of TB before the initiation of DOTS regimen.
Key words: TB, Pre-Diagnosis, Diagnosis, Cost, DOTS