Documenting catastrophic spending on health by migrant slum population

Background: India ranks among the bottom five countries in public health spending. Out of pocket spending of households on healthcare is almost 70% of income and reimbursement in any form availed by households whose members are employed in the formal sector is negligible. Objectives: To determine the usual source of medical care opted for by the study population. To find out the illness pattern and its age/sex distribution in the study population. To find out the expenditure incurred on illness and its source of procurement by the study population. Methodology: 52.42% urban Aligarh resides in slums. A cross sectional study was done to study the newer slum pockets. 3409 households with a population of 16,978 were studied with the help of pretested questionnaire; SPSS 20 was used for statistical analysis. Results: In our study, we found that almost all the households suffered from catastrophic health expenditure. The study population, which was already vulnerable owing to their low socio-economic and migrant status was further forced into poverty and indebtedness on account of expenditure on illness. Conclusions: National health financing systems should be designed to protect households from financial catastrophe, by reducing out-of-pocket spending.

Keywords

Out of pocket expenditure, New urban slums, Catastrophic health expenditure

Citation

Mehnaz S, Abedi AJ, Fazli SF, Mushfiq S, Khan Z, Ansari MA. Documenting catastrophic spending on health by migrant slum population. Indian Journal of Community Health. 2019 Sep; 31(3): 308-314

URI

https://imsear.searo.who.int/handle/123456789/191997

Collections

Indian Journal of Community Health

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