Healthcare Costs to Poor Families: An Agonising Burden

Excerpt

Evaluating the total burden that critical illness imposes on families is a difficult task. The emotional toll of anxieties of disease trajectory and unfamiliar hospital settings and financial burdens of loss of earnings and accommodation, travel costs, are difficult to quantify. However, the direct financial costs such as hospital fees can be categorised based on services provided. Direct fees to families is an important consideration among those in extreme poverty and may dictate care seeking behavior and care limiting decisions as compared to families in richer countries where universal health coverage and large safety nets render cost to families as minor considerations. …