Cancer drives patients to poverty in Southeast Asia
From ESMO - December 17, 2015
Cancer drives patients to poverty in Southeast Asia
Five percent of cancer patients and their families were pushed into poverty in Southeast Asia between March 2012 and September 2013, because of high disease-related costs, a study1 at the inaugural ESMO Asia 2015 Congress in Singapore shows.
The research, conducted earlier this year, evaluated data collected in eight low and middle-income Southeast Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) to assess patient risk of financial catastrophe (medical expenditures exceeding 30% of annual household income), economic hardship (inability to make necessary household payments) and impoverishment (living on less than 2 US dollars per day), and the association between economic struggles and risk of death. The study shows that cancer resulted in ‘financial catastrophe’ for almost half of the patients who suffered from economic hardship at the time of diagnosis.
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