Figure 1.
Participants’ selection and data collection process.
Involving clinical heads to facilitate the selection process of the participants allowed to be comprehensive and to capture the target population. Similarly, several precautions were implemented at the different stages of the process to ensure best quality data.
Figure 2.
Flow diagram of the study participants.
All participants (245/245) reported research outcomes from onset of their TB symptoms to intensive treatment while a smaller proportion of participants (153/245) reported research outcomes for their overall care pathway.
Table 1.
Demographic and clinical pattern of the participants.
Figure 3.
Overall direct cost of tuberculosis by category and region (in USD).
Distributions of cost were widely spread. No statistical difference has been showed between new cases and retreatment cases (P = 0.8797). On the other hand, urban dwellers were substantially more likely to spend a higher overall direct cost than rural residents (P<0.0001).
Table 2.
Direct out-of-pocket cost for tuberculosis in every stage of the patient care pathway (in USD).
Table 3.
Major item costs >0 incurred in every stage of the patient care pathway (in USD).