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Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism

BACKGROUND: Although, current treatment services for Tuberculosis (TB) in Nigeria are provided free of charge in public facilities, the benefits (value) that patients attach to such service is not known. In addition, the prices that could be charged for treatment in case government and its partners...

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Autores principales: Ochonma, Ogbonnia G., Onwujekwe, Obinna E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5424411/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28486981
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0574-2
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author Ochonma, Ogbonnia G.
Onwujekwe, Obinna E.
author_facet Ochonma, Ogbonnia G.
Onwujekwe, Obinna E.
author_sort Ochonma, Ogbonnia G.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although, current treatment services for Tuberculosis (TB) in Nigeria are provided free of charge in public facilities, the benefits (value) that patients attach to such service is not known. In addition, the prices that could be charged for treatment in case government and its partners withdraw from the provision of free services or inclusion of the services in health insurance plans are not known. Hence, there is a need to elicit the maximum amounts that patients are willing to pay for TB treatment services, both for themselves and for the very poor patients that may not be able to pay if some user fees are introduced (altruistic willingness to pay). METHODS: A pretested interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to elicit the maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for TB treatment services from TB patients in a tertiary hospital in southeast Nigeria. WTP was elicited using the bidding game question format after a scenario was presented to the respondents. Data was analysed using tabulations. Tobit regression models were used to examine the validity of the elicited WTP for own use and altruistic WTP. RESULTS: The results show that those aged 30 years and below constituted more than two-fifth (43.2%) of the respondents. More than half of the respondents (52.8%) were not employed. 100 (80.0%) of the respondents were willing to pay for their own use of TB treatment services while 78(62.4%) of the respondents were willing to make altruistic contributions so that the very poor could benefit from the TB services. A Tobit regression analysis of maximum WTP for TB for own use shows that respondents were willing to pay maximum amounts at different statistically significant levels. The results equally show that altruistic WTP was positively and statistically significantly related to the employment status, distance from UNTH and global seriousness of TB. CONCLUSIONS: Most patients positively valued the provision of free TB services and were willing to pay for TB treatment for own use. The better-off ones were also willing to make altruistic contributions. Free provision of TB treatment services is potentially worthwhile, but there is potential scope for continuation of universal provision of TB treatment services, even if the government and donors scale down their financing of the services. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12939-017-0574-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-54244112017-05-10 Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism Ochonma, Ogbonnia G. Onwujekwe, Obinna E. Int J Equity Health Research BACKGROUND: Although, current treatment services for Tuberculosis (TB) in Nigeria are provided free of charge in public facilities, the benefits (value) that patients attach to such service is not known. In addition, the prices that could be charged for treatment in case government and its partners withdraw from the provision of free services or inclusion of the services in health insurance plans are not known. Hence, there is a need to elicit the maximum amounts that patients are willing to pay for TB treatment services, both for themselves and for the very poor patients that may not be able to pay if some user fees are introduced (altruistic willingness to pay). METHODS: A pretested interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to elicit the maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for TB treatment services from TB patients in a tertiary hospital in southeast Nigeria. WTP was elicited using the bidding game question format after a scenario was presented to the respondents. Data was analysed using tabulations. Tobit regression models were used to examine the validity of the elicited WTP for own use and altruistic WTP. RESULTS: The results show that those aged 30 years and below constituted more than two-fifth (43.2%) of the respondents. More than half of the respondents (52.8%) were not employed. 100 (80.0%) of the respondents were willing to pay for their own use of TB treatment services while 78(62.4%) of the respondents were willing to make altruistic contributions so that the very poor could benefit from the TB services. A Tobit regression analysis of maximum WTP for TB for own use shows that respondents were willing to pay maximum amounts at different statistically significant levels. The results equally show that altruistic WTP was positively and statistically significantly related to the employment status, distance from UNTH and global seriousness of TB. CONCLUSIONS: Most patients positively valued the provision of free TB services and were willing to pay for TB treatment for own use. The better-off ones were also willing to make altruistic contributions. Free provision of TB treatment services is potentially worthwhile, but there is potential scope for continuation of universal provision of TB treatment services, even if the government and donors scale down their financing of the services. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12939-017-0574-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5424411/ /pubmed/28486981 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0574-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Ochonma, Ogbonnia G.
Onwujekwe, Obinna E.
Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism
title Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism
title_full Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism
title_fullStr Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism
title_full_unstemmed Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism
title_short Patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in Nigeria: exploring own use and altruism
title_sort patients’ willingness to pay for the treatment of tuberculosis in nigeria: exploring own use and altruism
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5424411/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28486981
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0574-2
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