 Cost savings from alternative treatments for tuberculosisHoward N. Barnum Social Science & Medicine, 1986, vol. 23, issue 9, 847-850 Abstract: The cost effectiveness of short tuberculosis treatment regimes using rifampicin (R) or thambutol (E) is calculated and compared to long regimes based on thiacetazone and isoniazid (TH). Although rifampicin and ethambutol are more costly per case they are only about one half the cost of the isoniazid based regimes per person effectively treated. This result is primarily derived from higher patient compliance with the short regimes. In addition, ambulatory treatment, where practical, is approximately one third the cost per person effectively treated of regimes using inpatient treatment for the first 2 months. Applied to 1982 data for Botswana, the analysis reveals that treating 80% of patients through ambulatory R and E regimes would have reduced total health expenditures for tuberculosis care by two thirds compared to inpatient regimes based on TH, and the number of people complying and cured would have doubled. Keywords: cost; effectiveness; tuberculosis; compliance; ambulatory; care (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:23:y:1986:i:9:p:847-850 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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