Cost of Hospitalization for Foodborne Diarrhea: A Case Study from Vietnam

Vietnam is undergoing a rapid social and economic developments resulting in speedy urbanization, changes in methods for animal production, food marketing systems, and food consumption habits. These changes will have major impacts on human exposures to food poisoning. The present case study aimed to estimate hospitalization costs of foodborne diarrhea cases in selected health facilities in Vietnam. This is a facility-based cost-of-illness study conducted in seven health facilities in Northern Vietnam. All suspect cases of foodborne diarrhea, as diagnosed by doctors, who admitted to the studied health facilities during June-August, 2013 were selected. Costs associated with hospitalization for foodborne diseases were estimated from societal perspective using retrospective approach. We included direct and indirect costs of hospitalization of foodborne diarrhea cases. During the study period, 87 foodborne diarrhea cases were included. On average, the costs per treatment episode and per hospitalization day for foodborne diarrhea case were US$ 106.9 and US$ 33.6 respectively. Indirect cost (costs of times to patient, their relatives due to the patient's illness) made up the largest share (51.3%). Direct medical costs accounted for 33.8%; direct non-medical costs (patient and their relatives) represented 14.9%. Cost levels and compositions varied by level of health facilities. More attentions should be paid on prevention, control of foodborne diarrhea cases in Vietnam. Ensuring safety of food depends on efforts of everyone involved in food chain continuum, from production, processing, and transport to consumption.

Patterns of Health Expenditures and Financial Protections in Vietnam 1992-2012

Health financing has been considered as an important building block of a health system and has a key role in promoting universal health coverage in the Vietnam. This paper aims to describe the pattern of health expenditure, including total health expenditure and composition of health expenditure, over the last two decades in Vietnam. The paper mainly uses the data from Vietnam National Health Account and Vietnam Living Standards Survey. We also included data from other relevant published literature, reports and statistics about health care expenditure in Vietnam. The per capita health expenditure in Vietnam increased from US$ 14 in 1995 to US$ 86 in 2012. The total health expenditure as a share of GDP also rose from 5.2% in 1995 to 6.9% in 2012. Public health expenditure as percentage of government expenditure rose from 7.4% in 1995 to nearly 10% in 2012. The coverage of health insurance went up from 10% in 1995 to 68.5% in 2012. However, health financing in Vietnam was depending on private expenditures (57.4% in 2012). As a result, the proportion of households with catastrophic expenditure in 2012 was 4.2%. The rate of impoverishment in 2012 was 2.5%. To ensure equity and efficient goal of health system, policy actions for containing the health care out-of-pocket payments and their poverty impacts are urgently needed in Vietnam.