Assessment of equity in healthcare financing and benefits distribution in Tanzania: a cross-sectional study protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Achieving universal health coverage goal by ensuring access to quality health service without financial hardship is a policy target in many countries. Thus, routine assessments of financial risk protection, and equity in financing and service delivery are required in order to track country progress towards realising this universal coverage target. This study aims to undertake a system-wide assessment of equity in health financing and benefits distribution as well as catastrophic and impoverishing health spending by using the recent national survey data in Tanzania. We aim for updated analyses and compare with previous assessments for trend analyses. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We will use cross-sectional data from the national Household Budget Survey 2017/2018 covering 9463 households and 45 935 individuals cross all 26 regions of mainland Tanzania. These data include information on service utilisation, healthcare payments and consumption expenditure. To assess the distribution of healthcare benefits (and in relation to healthcare need) across population subgroups, we will employ a benefit incidence analysis across public and private health providers. The distributions of healthcare benefits across population subgroups will be summarised by concentration indices. The distribution of healthcare financing burdens in relation to household ability-to-pay across population subgroups will be assessed through a financing incidence analysis. Financing incidence analysis will focus on domestic sources (tax revenues, insurance contributions and out-of-pocket payments). Kakwani indices will be used to summarise the distributions of financing burdens according to households' ability to pay. We will further estimate two measures of financial risk protection (ie, catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishing effect of healthcare payments). ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: We will involve secondary data analysis that does not require ethical approval. The results of this study will be disseminated through stakeholder meetings, peer-reviewed journal articles, policy briefs, local and international conferences and through social media platforms.

Cost of illness due to typhoid Fever in pemba, zanzibar, East Africa.

The aim of this study was to estimate the economic burden of typhoid fever in Pemba, Zanzibar, East Africa. This study was an incidence-based cost-of-illness analysis from a societal perspective. It covered new episodes of blood culture-confirmed typhoid fever in patients presenting at the outpatient or inpatient departments of three district hospitals between May 2010 and December 2010. Cost of illness was the sum of direct costs and costs for productivity loss. Direct costs covered treatment, travel, and meals. Productivity costs were loss of income by patients and caregivers. The analysis included 17 episodes. The mean age of the patients, was 23 years (range=5-65, median=22). Thirty-five percent were inpatients, with a mean of 4.75 days of hospital stay (range=3-7, median=4.50). The mean cost for treatment alone during hospital care was US$ 21.97 at 2010 prices (US$ 1=1,430.50 Tanzanian Shilling─TSH). The average societal cost was US$ 154.47 per typhoid episode. The major expenditure was productivity cost due to lost wages of US$ 128.02 (83%). Our results contribute to the further economic evaluation of typhoid fever vaccination in Zanzibar and other sub-Saharan African countries.