Research Article
Socioeconomic Impact of HIV/AIDS on Households under Free Antiretroviral Therapy in Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia
Marino Nomoto1*, Saly Saint2, Krishna C Poudel1, Junko Yasuoka1 and Masamine Jimba1
1Department of Community and Global Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Japan
2The National Center for Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
- *Corresponding Author:
- Marino Nomoto
Department of Community and Global Health
Graduate School of Medicine
The University of Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan, 7-3-1, Hongo
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan
E-mail: [email protected]
Received Date: December 01, 2012; Accepted Date: December 17, 2012; Published Date: December 21, 2012
Citation: Nomoto M, Saint S, Poudel KC, Yasuoka J, Jimba M (2013) Socioeconomic Impact of HIV/AIDS on Households under Free Antiretroviral Therapy in Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia. J Antivir Antiretrovir 5:003-007. doi: 10.4172/jaa.1000056
Copyright: © 2013 Nomoto M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the economic status of HIV-affected households with nonaffected households and explore the economic impact of HIV/AIDS on HIV-affected households under high coverage of free antiretroviral therapies (ART).
Design and methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study in Preah Sihanouk Province, Cambodia in February and March 2008. We recruited HIV-positive participants (n=285) from a referral hospital and five health centers, and other 285 HIV-negative participants. We interviewed them using a questionnaire and compared the differences of economic status such as household income, expenditure, assets as well as medical cost, education cost, transportation cost for health services and funeral cost between the households of HIV-positive participants (HIV-positive households) and the households of HIV-negative participants (HIV-negative households).
Results: Compared to the negative households, the HIV-positive households were more likely to have lower household income (p<0.001), household expenditure (p<0.001), assets (p<0.001), education cost (p=0.001) and medical cost (p<0.001). Among the HIV-positive households, the proportion of medical cost to the household expenditure was 1.3%, which was lower than that of the HIV-negative households. On the contrary, the economic burden for transportations for medical service and funeral cost was much higher among the HIV-positive households compared to the HIV-negative households.
Conclusions: The HIV-positive households had worse economic status compared to the negative households. Though medical cost was lower than that of the negative households under high coverage of free ART, the HIVpositives were still suffering from high economic burden in non health related living cost. From the results of our study, we suggest that the government and global agencies should support their living beyond health.
