ECONOMIC BURDEN OF CANCER AND PAYMENT COPING MECHANISM AMONG PATIENTS IN UNIVERSITY OF BENIN TEACHING HOSPITAL

ABSTRACT

This study elicits the economic burden of cancer and payment coping mechanism among cancer patients receiving treatment in University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City Edo state. It adopted the survey research design and simple random sampling method to select 164 cancer patients attending Oncology ward in University of Benin Teaching Hospital. A structured questionnaire was used as instruments of data collection. Descriptive (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation) and Inferential statistics (Analysis of Variance with Scheffe post hoc, Chi-square test, logistic regression) were used to analysed the data. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. This was performed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24.0 for windows. The result from the study shows that there is a significant association between payment coping mechanism and socio-economic group of the respondents; with those in the lower class reported more economic burden paying for their treatment. The study recommends that governments and donor agencies should actively put sustainable measures in place to reduce cost of cancer care.