Treatment is free, yet 1 in 4 Indian TB patients must sell assets or borrow money
New Delhi: One in four tuberculosis (TB) patients had to sell assets or borrow money--that is, resort to ‘hardship financing’--to pay for their treatment, a new study has shown.
“The elimination of catastrophic costs by linking eligible TB patients with social welfare schemes including providing nutritional support” is a stated objective of the National Strategic Plan (NSP) 2017-2025, the Centre’s plan to eliminate TB in India by 2025. However, even among those who received free care, 21.3% of patients resorted to hardship financing, according to the study published in the Indian Journal of Tuberculosisin March 2019.
The study used hardship financing as an indicator of the privations a family must undergo to pay for TB treatment. It identified 899 TB cases from the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) 71st round conducted in 2014, which provides information about health expenditure along with various sources of financing. The sources of financing are classified as: own income and savings, borrowings (with or without interest), sale of assets, contributions or assistance from friends and relatives. The authors assumed borrowings, mainly with repayment and interest, similar to a 2015 study published in the journal Health Policy & Planning.
For more information about the study, click here.
Source: IndiaSpend
