BACKGROUND Paying for health care may exclude poor people. Burkina Faso adopted the DOTS strategy implementing "free care" for Tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis and treatment. This should increase universal health coverage and help to overcome social and economic barriers to health access. METHODS Straddling 2007 and 2008, in-depth interviews were conducted over a year among smear-positive pulmonar...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES An estimate of the lifetime medical costs of an obese child provides a benchmark of the potential per capita savings that could accrue from successful childhood obesity prevention efforts. We reviewed the literature to identify the best current estimate of the incremental lifetime per capita medical cost of an obese child in the United States today relative to a normal...

Cost identification is fundamental to many economic analyses of health care. Health care costs are often derived from administrative databases. Unit costs may also be obtained from published studies. When these sources will not suffice (e.g., in evaluating interventions or programs), data may be gathered directly through observation and surveys. This article describes how to use direct measurem...

BACKGROUND A major impediment to the treatment of TB is a diagnostic process that requires multiple visits. Descriptions of patient costs associated with diagnosis use different protocols and are not comparable. METHODS We aimed to describe the direct costs incurred by adults attending TB diagnostic centres in four countries and factors associated with expenditure for diagnosis. Surveys of 22...