Medical costs push 78 million Asians into poverty
BRITAIN: International health experts have estimated that 78 million
more Asians than previously thought are living in poverty because of
healthcare costs.
Many people in Asian countries do not have health insurance and pay
for doctor bills and medical treatments. But the out-of-pocket health
expenses they incur are not included in conventional estimates of
poverty.
When researchers deducted the medical costs from total household
resources in 11 Asian countries, millions more people fell below the
internationally accepted poverty threshold of $1 per head per day.
"If you allow for direct out-of-pocket healthcare payments, there are
another 78 million counted as poor," said Dr Eddy van Doorslaer, a
health economist at Erasmus University in the Netherlands who headed the
research team.
"We calculated that an additional 2.7 percent of the population under
study ended up with less than $1 a per day after they had paid for
healthcare."
The figures, which are reported in the Lancet medical journal on
Friday, are based on information from national expenditure surveys of
what people spend on medical care in the various countries.
The researchers extrapolated the national, representative samples to
cover the entire population. Overall the study showed the prevalence of
poverty was 14 percent higher than other estimates that did not include
out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
"We were surprised to see that such a large share of healthcare is
paid for out-of-pocket," said Van Doorslaer.
"A lot of that is incurred by people living just above the poverty
line and are pushed below it as soon as they have to incur these
expenses," he added.
Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia had the lowest burden of healthcare
payments in the study. The situation was more striking in larger nations
such as Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal and Vietnam.
"Those are all countries where more than 60 percent of total
healthcare costs are paid out of pocket," said Van Doorslaer.
In Bangladesh and India nearly 4 percent of the population fell below
the $1 a day threshold after the out-of-pockets costs were considered.
Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Kyrgyzstan were also included in the
study.
"A large proportion of the Asian population is at risk of substantial
financial outlays for healthcare," said Van Doorslaer, adding that
methods to reduce risk, such as public or private health insurance, are
needed.
LONDON, Friday, Reuters |