scholarly journals Exploring the Backyard of nCOVID: Determinants of death toll in pandemics

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-117
Author(s):  
Rajesh Gupta ◽  
Smita Trivedi

Heterogeneity in number of deaths in different countries during the ongoing nCOVID crisis challenged us to look for determinants of pandemic death toll across the world. Using the past two decades data of pandemic deaths in the world, this study considered if engagement in international trade, health care expenditure and population density have any impact on the pandemic death toll. Using linear regression model controlled for types of disease, we not only found trade significantly impacting death toll, but also surprisingly found positive correlation between share of healthcare expenditure in GDP and fatalities in pandemics. Our findings suggest that policy intervention is required for mitigating health impacts of trade and ‘tweaking’ the health expenditure towards pandemic prevention.

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 622-622

In developed countries, generally 5% to 8% of GNP is spent on health care; during the past decade, health care expenditure has increased at a more rapid rate than GNP. Expenditure on pharmaceuticals represents 10% to 20% of the total health expenditure. In developing countries, figures vary widely but the pharmaceutical expenditure per capita per year may be below one U.S. dollar and may be as high as 50% of the total health care expenditure....


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 215013272093940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rimesh Pal ◽  
Urmila Yadav

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, India has witnessed a massive surge of cases in the past 3 weeks. As of April 30, 33 610 confirmed cases and 1075 deaths have been reported from 32 states/union territories in India. Apart from the nationwide lockdown, India has increased its testing rate and has markedly strengthened the health care sector to combat COVID-19. With India’s population of more than 1.3 billion people at a significant population density compared with the rest of the world, the lack of universal access to clean water and overall poor socioeconomic status, all have posed a major challenge to India’s fight against COVID-19. Failure to contain the pandemic in India could have disastrous consequences with widespread cases and thousands of deaths that could easily overwhelm the health care infrastructure. Unabated spread of the pandemic could make India the next COVID-19 hotspot; hence the World Health Organization has recently stated that the “future of the pandemic will depend on how India handles it.” Here, we have summarized the present scenario of the pandemic in India and the myriad challenges being faced by the country in its fight against COVID-19.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. e0258274
Author(s):  
Xuesong Guo ◽  
Jun Zhang ◽  
Zhiwei Xu ◽  
Xin Cong ◽  
Zhenli Zhu

Objective We aim to estimate the total factor productivity and analyze factors related to the Chinese government’s health care expenditure in each of its provinces after its implementation of new health care reform in the period after 2009. Materials and methods We use the Malmquist DEA model to measure efficiency and apply the Tobit regression to explore factors that influence the efficiency of government health care expenditure. Data are taken from the China statistics yearbook (2004–2020). Results We find that the average TFP of China’s 31 provincial health care expenditure was lower than 1 in the period 2009–2019. We note that the average TFP was much higher after new health care reform was implemented, and note this in the eastern, central and western regions. But per capita GDP, population density and new health care reform implementation are found to have a statistically significant impact on the technical efficiency of the provincial government’s health care expenditure (P<0.05); meanwhile, region, education, urbanization and per capita provincial government health care expenditure are not found to have a statistically significant impact. Conclusion Although the implementation of the new medical reform has improved the efficiency of the government’s health expenditure, it is remains low in 31 provinces in China. In addition, the government should consider per capita GDP, population density and other factors when coordinating the allocation of health care input. Significance This study systematically analyzes the efficiency and influencing factors of the Chinese government’s health expenditure after it introduced new health care reforms. The results show that China’s new medical reform will help to improve the government’s health expenditure. The Chinese government can continue to adhere to the new medical reform policy, and should pay attention to demographic and economic factors when implementing the policy.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
UNTO HÄKKINEN ◽  
PEKKA MARTIKAINEN ◽  
ANJA NORO ◽  
ELINA NIHTILÄ ◽  
MIKKO PELTOLA

AbstractThis study revisits the debate on the ‘red herring’, i.e. the claim that population aging will not have a significant impact on health care expenditure (HCE), using a Finnish data set. We decompose HCE into several components and include both survivors and deceased individuals into the analyses. We also compare the predictions of health expenditure based on a model that takes into account the proximity to death with the predictions of a naïve model, which includes only age and gender and their interactions. We extend our analysis to include income as an explanatory variable. According to our results, total expenditure on health care and care of elderly people increases with age but the relationship is not as clear as is usually assumed when a naïve model is used in health expenditure projections. Among individuals not in long-term care, we found a clear positive relationship between expenditure and age only for health centre and psychiatric inpatient care. In somatic care and prescribed drugs, the expenditure clearly decreased with age among deceased individuals. Our results emphasize that even in the future, health care expenditure might be driven more by changes in the propensity to move into long-term care and medical technology than age and gender alone, as often claimed in public discussion. We do not find any strong positive associations between income and expenditure for most non-LTC categories of health care utilization. Income was positively related to expenditure on prescribed medicines, in which cost-sharing between the state and the individual is relatively high. Overall, our results indicate that the future expenditure is more likely to be determined by health policy actions than inevitable trends in the demographic composition of the population.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred EBOH ◽  
Steve METIBOBA

Abstract Background: As a way of tackling child mortality, many countries in the world depend on their respective health-care system. But governments of most countries in Africa are yet to provide robust funding of their health-care systems as many people still depend on the out-of-pocket payment to receive health services. Against this backdrop, this study used annual panel data to assess the effect of health-care expenditure and immunisation on the under-five mortality rate in 30 selected African countries for the period 2000-2017. Methods: Multiple regression technique was adopted for the data analysis and the robust fixed regression estimator was preferred to the random effects as determined by Hausman test.Results: The findings indicated that domestic government general health expenditure had a significant negative effect on the under-five mortality rate. However, the effect of domestic private health expenditure on under-five mortality was not significant while external health expenditure had a significant negative effect on under-five mortality rate. The impact of diphtheria immunisation on under-five mortality was significant. Conclusions: Except domestic private health expenditure, government and external forms of health expenditure coupled with diphtheria immunisation were significant factors for the reduction of the under-five mortality in the selected countries.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin B. Bernstein

In the past two decades, courts and scholars have grappled with the appropriateness of pre-abortion disclosures mandated by the state. Statutes requiring physicians to recite a specific script, often detailing potential psychological “risks” of choosing to terminate a pregnancy, have proliferated nationwide over the past decade. Opponents of such laws have sometimes characterized the requirement of a procedurespecific disclosure as unnecessary and unique to the abortion context. In recent years, however, state legislatures supportive of abortion rights have legislated procedure-specific mandatory disclosures in the context of assisted reproduction and other health care procedures with reproductive health impacts.


Author(s):  
Frank J. Baker ◽  
Jacek B. Franaszek

With the development and deployment of commercial jet aircraft in the mid 1950's, airline travel has become commonplace throughout the world. A rapid increase in the numbers of aircraft, airline routes, and flying time has occurred. New technology has added sophisticated and complicated gear to aircraft and their support systems. Every new system has the potential for failure and to some extent additional components increase the risk of technological breakdown. The increased chance of technological breakdown favors an increase in aircraft accidents. Fortunately, development and utilization of sophisticated redundant electronic and mechanical improvements aimed specifically at improving safety have also occurred. The results of these changes over the past twenty-five years has been a decreasing rate of accidents per mile flown. Due to the tremendous increase in flying, however, the absolute numbers of accidents associated passenger morbidity and mortality have risen (1). For the health care system, the major impact has resulted from the absolute increase in aircrash victims.Aircraft accidents have regularly produced mass casualty incidents with the number of victims ranging from a few to several hundred. Aircraft accidents can be divided into essentially four types: mid-air crashes (so called “hard impact”); crashes on takeoff; crashes on landing; and on-ground accidents (“soft impact”). Mid-air accidents are frequently away from population centers and usually there are no survivors. The medical impact therefore is minimal. Accidents occurring on takeoff, landing, and on the ground, occur at or close to airports, and the nature of the accident is such that there may be many victims (1).


2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-187
Author(s):  
Ermanno Attanasio

Pharmaceutical products are relevant for their contribution to the medicine progress and in health peoples improvement, altough this evidence goes back to the forthy years with the reduction in mortality, morbidity and hospitalisation rates. The ambivalence of drugs, both remedy and poison, needs a careful assessment of risks and benefits. Primitive estimates of health treatments evaluation occurred in the human history but the modern concept of evaluation in health care derived from cost-benefit analysis (welfare economics) and technology assessment. Then a new discipline, pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research, developed with the contribution of health economics, clinical medicine, pharmacology, statistics and epidemiology. Pharmaceutical products are also relevant because of their responsability of health expenditure growth. From 1992, in Italy, several legislative actions were made to face up the pharmaceutical expenditure. The most important one (L. 537/1993) achieved the maximum decrease of 16,8%, in 1994, and modified radically the pharmaceutical policy. Nevertheless, in the following six years the pharmaceutical expenditure grew more than 93%. New actions were made fixing the pharmaceutical expenditure to 13% of health expenditure, any excess being charged to Regions. In the new version for the current year, the excesses will be paid-back by pharmaceutical companies (60%) and Regions (40%). Furtherly, the creation of Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco increases the relevance of cost-effectiveness analyses for drugs reimbursement. However, pharmacoeconomic evaluations have still many methodological problems. Economic variables should be treated in the same manner of biomedical or epidemiological data, that is, by confidence intervals and sample sizes. There would be an “economic significance” besides to clinical and statistical ones. In this way, pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research would be able to add rationality to health care expenditure.


Author(s):  
Abhishek Paul ◽  
Suresh Chandra Malick ◽  
Shatanik Mondal ◽  
Saibendu Kumar Lahiri

Background:Equity in health care is defined as equal access to available care for equal need. Out-of-pocket expenditures are the most inequitable means of health care financing. These payments become catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) if it exceeds the household’s ‘Capacity to Pay’. As fairness is one of the fundamental objectives of the health system, identification of the factors responsible for these expenditures is important. Hence this study was conducted to find out the determinants of CHE and to explore the socioeconomic horizontal equity in relation to it. Methods:Total 352 households from 9 villages of Amdanga block, North 24 Parganas, were studied for 12 months. Annual out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure exceeding 40% of annual household non-food expenditure was classified as CHE and determinants of the same were identified using logit-model. Equity was measured by Concentration index and modified Kakwani measure (MDK). Results:Overall prevalence of CHE was 20.7% and highest (39.3%) in the second income quintile. The odds of incurring CHE were highest (35.43) for the households with member/s requiring inpatient treatment followed by households having more than five members (12.81). Negative value of concentration index and MDK indicated that the probability of incurring CHE was disproportionately concentrated among the poor and the financing system was degressive, however some amount of equity was noted in the poorest quintile. Conclusions:Apart from the poorest section in the community the poorer and middle income sections are still exposed to healthcare expenditure shocks and the health care spending was diverse and less equitable.


Author(s):  
Orhan Torul

This study investigates the relationship between health care expenditure and income inequality empirically. Using data from a large panel of countries covering a sizeable period of time, how level and composition of health care expenditures correlate with income inequality is studied via the panel data fixed effects estimation methodology. These estimations yield several robust findings. First, there is a significant positive correlation between income inequality and reliance on private resources for health care financing. Second, there exists a significant negative correlation between health care expenditure per capita and income inequality. Third, there is a significant negative correlation between income inequality and health care expenditure as a share of GDP. Next, this study analyzes a select group of well-established democracies with developed economies to detect if health expenditure and income inequality variables correlate with public beliefs and preferences. Empirical analyses reveal that indeed belief and preferences accord well with policy choices.


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