Willingness and ability to pay for breast cancer treatment among patients from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study

by Tamiru Demeke, Damen Hailemariam, Pablo Santos, Edom Seife, Adamu Addissie, Eric Sven Kroeber, Rafael Mikolajczyk, Birgit Silbersack, Eva Johanna Kantelhardt, Susanne Unverzagt

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignant neoplasm among women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The willingness and ability to pay (WATP) for treatment is a contributing factor in the utilization of health care services. The World Health Organization Breast Cancer Initiative calls for 80% of patients to complete multimodality treatment and indicates payment as central factor to improve BC outcome. The objectives of this study are to identify how much female BC patients paid in Addis Ababa for BC treatment, their WATP for BC treatment, and the factors that affect WATP.

The researchers collected data from 204 randomly selected BC patients who were treated in one of four different health facilities (one public and three private) between September 2018 and May 2019. A structured questionnaire was used to assess their WATP for BC treatment and multivariable regression to investigate factors associated with patients’ WATP.

Of interviewed patients, 146 (72%) were at reproductive age. Patients’ median expenditure for all BC treatment services was 336 US dollars (USD) in a public cancer center and 926 USD in privately owned health facilities. These amounts are in contrast with a reported WATP of 50 USD and 149 USD. WATP increased with increasing expenditure (OR 1.43; 95% CI 1.09 to 1.89 per 100 US), educational level (OR 1.37; 95% CI 1.02 to 1.85) and service quality (OR 1.34; 95% CI 1.04 to 1.72). In contrast, a monthly income increase by 100 USD corresponds to a 17% decrease of WATP (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.70 to 0.99).

We demonstrated that BC treatment was very expensive for patients, and the cost was much higher than their WATP. Thus, we suggest that BC should be included in both social and community-based health insurance plans and treatment fees should consider patients’ WATP.