The southern state of Kerala, India was seriously affected by a chikungunya epidemic in 2007. As this outbreak was the first of its kind, the morbidity incurred by the epidemic was a challenge to the state's public health system. A cross sectional survey was conducted in five districts of Kerala that were seriously affected by the epidemic, using a two-stage cluster sampling technique to select...

Background There is high reliance on out-of-pocket (OOP) health payments as a means of financing health system in Nigeria. OOP health payments can make households face catastrophe and become impoverished. The study aims to examine the financial burden of OOP health payments among households in Nigeria.   Methods Secondary data from the Harmonized Nigeria Living Standard Survey (HNLSS) of 2009/2...

background access to appropriate and affordable healthcare is needed to achieve better health outcomes in africa. however, access to healthcare remains low, especially among the poor. in zambia, poor access exists despite the policy by the government to remove user fees in all primary healthcare facilities in the public sector. the paper has two main objectives: (i) to examine the factors assoc...

BACKGROUND Out of pocket (OOP) health spending can potentially expose households to risk of incurring large medical bills, and this may impact on their welfare. This work investigates the effect of catastrophic OOP on the incidence and depth of poverty in Malawi. METHODS The paper is based on data that was collected from 12,271 households that were interviewed during the third Malawi integrat...

BACKGROUND Unequal geographical distribution of medical care resources and insufficient healthcare coverage have been two long-standing problems with Taiwan's public health system. The implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI) attempted to mitigate the inequality in health care use. This study examines the degree to which Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) has reduced out-of-pocke...

Objective This study aimed to identify the major variables in the estimation of health expenditure in OECD member countries with the decision tree method and to categorize the member countries by health expenditure. Methods The study population comprised the 2014 data of the 35 OECD countries. In the study, health expenditure as a share of gross domestic product was the dependent variable whi...

BACKGROUND As the drive towards universal coverage is gaining momentum globally, the need for assessing levels of financial health protection in countries, particularity the developing world, has increasingly become important. In Swaziland, the level of financial health protection is not clearly understood. OBJECTIVE To assess financial catastrophe and impoverishment from out-of-pocket paymen...

The World Health Survey (WHS) which has been implemented in more than 70 countries with standardized questionnaires opens a great opportunity for research on health care financing issues. This study examines the household expenditures and health expenditure collected in the WHS in terms of reliability, consistency between different ways of data collection within the survey and with other types ...

BACKGROUND The state of Uttar Pradesh, India accounts for one-quarter of India's neonatal deaths and 8 percent of those worldwide. More than half (52%) of these deaths occur due to infections. In order to achieve Millennium Development Goal-4 of reducing child mortality by two-thirds by the year 2015, it is important to study factors which affect neonatal health. In Uttar Pradesh there is meage...