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Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India
BACKGROUND: The nationwide lockdown (March 25 to June 8, 2020) to curb the spread of coronavirus infection had significant health and economic impacts on the Indian economy. There is limited empirical evidence on how COVID-19 restrictive measures may impact the economic welfare of specific groups of...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9421110/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36038848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07681-z |
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author | Chatterjee, Susmita Das, Palash Vassall, Anna |
author_facet | Chatterjee, Susmita Das, Palash Vassall, Anna |
author_sort | Chatterjee, Susmita |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The nationwide lockdown (March 25 to June 8, 2020) to curb the spread of coronavirus infection had significant health and economic impacts on the Indian economy. There is limited empirical evidence on how COVID-19 restrictive measures may impact the economic welfare of specific groups of patients, e.g., tuberculosis patients. We provide the first such evidence for India. METHODS: A total of 291 tuberculosis patients from the general population and from a high-risk group, patients from tea garden areas, were interviewed at different time points to understand household income loss during the complete lockdown, three and eight months after the complete lockdown was lifted. Income loss was estimated by comparing net monthly household income during and after lockdown with prelockdown income. Tuberculosis service utilization patterns before and during the lockdown period also were examined. Household income loss, travel and other expenses related to tuberculosis drug pickup were presented in 2020 US dollars (1 US$ = INR 74.132). RESULTS: 26% of households with tuberculosis patients in tea garden areas and 51% of households in the general population had zero monthly income during the complete lockdown months (April–May 2020). Overall income loss slowly recovered during July–August compared to April–May 2020. Approximately 7% of patients in the general population and 4% in tea garden areas discontinued their tuberculosis medicines because of the complete lockdown. CONCLUSION: Discontinuation of medicine will have an additional burden on the tuberculosis elimination program in terms of additional cases, including multidrug resistant tuberculosis cases. Income loss for households and poor restoration of income after the lockdown will likely have an impact on the nutrition of tuberculosis patients and families. Tuberculosis patients working in the informal sector were the worst affected group during the nationwide lockdown. This emphasizes that a policy priority must continue to protect those working in informal sectors from the economic consequences of such restrictive measures, including paid sick leave, additional food support, and direct benefit transfers. Alongside ensuring widespread access to COVID-19 vaccines, these policy actions remain pivotal in ensuring the well-being of those who are unfortunate enough to be living with tuberculosis. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07681-z. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9421110 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-94211102022-08-30 Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India Chatterjee, Susmita Das, Palash Vassall, Anna BMC Infect Dis Research Article BACKGROUND: The nationwide lockdown (March 25 to June 8, 2020) to curb the spread of coronavirus infection had significant health and economic impacts on the Indian economy. There is limited empirical evidence on how COVID-19 restrictive measures may impact the economic welfare of specific groups of patients, e.g., tuberculosis patients. We provide the first such evidence for India. METHODS: A total of 291 tuberculosis patients from the general population and from a high-risk group, patients from tea garden areas, were interviewed at different time points to understand household income loss during the complete lockdown, three and eight months after the complete lockdown was lifted. Income loss was estimated by comparing net monthly household income during and after lockdown with prelockdown income. Tuberculosis service utilization patterns before and during the lockdown period also were examined. Household income loss, travel and other expenses related to tuberculosis drug pickup were presented in 2020 US dollars (1 US$ = INR 74.132). RESULTS: 26% of households with tuberculosis patients in tea garden areas and 51% of households in the general population had zero monthly income during the complete lockdown months (April–May 2020). Overall income loss slowly recovered during July–August compared to April–May 2020. Approximately 7% of patients in the general population and 4% in tea garden areas discontinued their tuberculosis medicines because of the complete lockdown. CONCLUSION: Discontinuation of medicine will have an additional burden on the tuberculosis elimination program in terms of additional cases, including multidrug resistant tuberculosis cases. Income loss for households and poor restoration of income after the lockdown will likely have an impact on the nutrition of tuberculosis patients and families. Tuberculosis patients working in the informal sector were the worst affected group during the nationwide lockdown. This emphasizes that a policy priority must continue to protect those working in informal sectors from the economic consequences of such restrictive measures, including paid sick leave, additional food support, and direct benefit transfers. Alongside ensuring widespread access to COVID-19 vaccines, these policy actions remain pivotal in ensuring the well-being of those who are unfortunate enough to be living with tuberculosis. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07681-z. BioMed Central 2022-08-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9421110/ /pubmed/36038848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07681-z Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Chatterjee, Susmita Das, Palash Vassall, Anna Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India |
title | Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India |
title_full | Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India |
title_fullStr | Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India |
title_full_unstemmed | Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India |
title_short | Impact of COVID-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in India |
title_sort | impact of covid-19 restrictive measures on income and health service utilization of tuberculosis patients in india |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9421110/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36038848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07681-z |
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