Economic Cost of Malaria on Sidama Zone

Abstract:      
Malaria remains one of the major health problems in Ethiopia as in Sidama Zone, Southern People’s Nations and Nationalities Region. Though it fairly gets attention as a health problem, its cost on the economy stayed unnoticed. In the thesis, ‘Economic Cost of Malaria on Sidama Zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia’, an attempted has made to investigate and estimate the economic cost of malaria morbidity and mortality on households and public Health institutions in Sidama Zone. To conduct the study, cross sectional household survey of randomly selected 100 households from rural setting of Sidama Zone has been done. 
Data collected by interview using the structured questionnaire and interviewing key informants from March 15 – April 01, 2011. Desk review done using checklist. The study area was chosen based on the agro-ecological feature and malaria prevalence of the Zone. The collected data analyzed using SPSS software; the findings were presented using tables and graphs. It was estimated that household paid an average of 20.46birr ($1.24) for prevention and 119.91birr ($7.27) for treatment per episode. That is household’s spend 21.81% of the total direct cost for prevention and the remaining 78.19% of total direct cost for treatment. 
A single Household in Sidama Zone spends an average of 140.51birr ($8.52) direct cost for prevention and treatment of malaria per episode. On the other hands, an average of 7.54 productive days is wasted by the victim due to illness, and 1.82 days by the person to take care of the patient. The indirect cost for productive days wasted for seeking treatment valued 99.50birr ($6.03) per patient and 22.78birr per caretaker. A total of 122.25birr ($7.40) indirect cost wasted per household while a person is sick with malaria. Therefore, malaria withdraws 56.70% of the households’ income or households pay an average of 247.40birr ($14.99) per malaria episode from the average cumulative income of 436.33birr ($26.44) per month. Public health institutes spent an average of 1.33birr ($0.09) per household for malaria prevention and 47.27birr ($2.87) per patient for treatment. Roll Back Malaria (RBM, 2008) Global Action Plan estimated the cost of country implementation of malaria control and elimination strategies suggested roughly US$1.5-3.0 per capita per year.
 Generally, malaria bears huge economic cost on households and public health institutions either directly or indirectly. Besides, it was observed that public spending to subsidize malaria control action for RBM from the Zone still lower than the standard. Overall, malaria manifested as a cause for underdevelopment by consuming scarce resources of Sidama Zone.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ፓርቲው ምርጫ ቦርድ ከተፅዕኖ ነፃ ሳይሆን የምርጫ ጊዜ ሰሌዳ ማውጣቱን ተቃወመ

የሐዋሳ ሐይቅ ትሩፋት

በሲዳማ ክልል የትግራይ ተወላጆች ምክክር