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Review
. 2019 Jun 17;4(2):94.
doi: 10.3390/tropicalmed4020094.

The Financial Burden of Tuberculosis for Patients in the Western-Pacific Region

Kerri Viney  1   2 , Tauhidul Islam  3 , Nguyen Binh Hoa  4   5 , Fukushi Morishita  6 , Knut Lönnroth  7
Affiliations
Review

The Financial Burden of Tuberculosis for Patients in the Western-Pacific Region

Kerri Viney et al. Trop Med Infect Dis. .

Abstract

The End Tuberculosis (TB) Strategy has the ambitious goal of ending the global TB epidemic by the year 2030, which is aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals. One of three high level indicators of the Strategy is the "catastrophic costs" indicator, which aims to determine the proportion of TB-affected households that incur TB-care related costs equivalent to 20% or more of their annual household income. The target is that zero percentage of TB-affected households will incur catastrophic costs related to TB care by the year 2020. In the Western Pacific Region of the World Health Organization, it is a priority to determine the financial burden of TB and then act to mitigate it. To date, eight countries in the Region have conducted nationally representative TB patient cost surveys to determine the costs of TB care. The results from four countries that have completed these surveys (i.e., Fiji, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Vietnam) indicate that between 35% and 70% of TB patients face catastrophic costs related to their TB care. With these results in mind, significant additional efforts are needed to ensure financial risk protection for TB patients, expand Universal Health Coverage, and improve access to social protection interventions. A multi-sectoral approach is necessary to achieve this ambitious goal by the year 2020.

Keywords: Western Pacific Region; catastrophic costs; social protection; tuberculosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. T.I and F.M are staff members of WHO. The authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this publication and they do not necessarily represent the decisions or policies of WHO.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
National surveys of costs faced by tuberculosis (TB) patients and their households in the Western Pacific Region: current progress and plans (updated in May 2019).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Results from the Fiji, Mongolia, Philippines, and Vietnam national surveys of costs faced by TB patients and their households, implemented 2016–2018. The number in the center of the circle is the best estimate of the percentage of TB patients and their households that experienced total costs that were above 20% of their annual income (i.e., catastrophic total costs). The outer ring shows the distribution of costs in three major cost categories. The number of TB patients included in each survey is shown after the country name. Source: Global Tuberculosis Report 2018, World Health Organization.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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