Browsing by Author "Mao, Wenhui"

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    Financial burden of healthcare for cancer patients with social medical insurance: a multi-centered study in urban China.
    (Int J Equity Health, 2017-10-10) Mao, Wenhui; Tang, Shenglan; Zhu, Ying; Xie, Zening; Chen, Wen
    BACKGROUND: Cancer accounts for one-fifth of the total deaths in China and brings heavy financial burden to patients and their families. Chinese government has made strong commitment to develop three types of social medical insurance since 1997 and recently, more attempts were invested to provide better financial protection. To analyze health services utilization and financial burden of insured cancer patients, and identify the gaps of financial protection provided by insurance in urban China. METHODS: A random sampling, from Urban Employee's Basic Medical Insurance claim database, was performed in 4 cities in 2008 to obtain insurance claim records of cancer patients. Services utilization, medical expenses and out-of-pocket (OOP) payment were the metrics collected from the insurance claim database, and household non-subsistence expenditure were estimated from Health Statistics. Catastrophic health expenditure was defined as household's total out-of-pocket payments exceed 40% of non-subsistence expenditure. Stratified analysis by age groups was performed on service use, expenditure and OOP payment. RESULTS: Data on 2091 insured cancer patients were collected. Reimbursement rates were over 80% for Shanghai and Beijing while Fuzhou and Chongqing only covered 60%-70% of total medical expenditure. Shanghai had the highest reimbursement rate (88.2%), high total expenditure ($1228) but lowest OOP payment ($170) among the four cities. Chongqing and Fuzhou's insured cancer patients exclusively preferred tertiary hospitals for outpatient services. Fuzhou led the annual total medical expense ($9963), followed by Chongqing, Beijing and Shanghai. The average OOP as proportion of household's capacity to pay was 87.3% (Chongqing), 66.0% (Fuzhou), 33.7% (Beijing) and 19.6% (Shanghai). Elderly insured cancer patients utilized fewer outpatient services, had lower number of inpatient admissions but longer length of stay, and higher total expenditure. CONCLUSIONS: Social economic development was not necessarily associated with total medical expense but determined the level of financial protection. The economic burden of insured cancer patients was reduced by insurance but it is still necessary to provide further financial protections and improve affordability of healthcare for cancer patients in China.
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    Scaling malaria interventions: bottlenecks to malaria elimination.
    (BMJ global health, 2023-11) Mao, Wenhui; Cooke, Rianna; Silimperi, Diana; Urli Hodges, Elina; Ortiz, Ernesto; Udayakumar, Krishna
    The slow progress in malaria control efforts and increasing challenges have prompted a need to accelerate the research and development (R&D), launch and scaling of effective interventions for malaria elimination. This research, including desk research and key informant interviews, identified the following challenges along the end-to-end scale-up pathway of malaria interventions. Underinvestment in malaria R&D persists, and developers from low-resource settings are not commonly included in the R&D process. Unpredictable or unclear regulatory and policy pathways have been a hurdle. The private sector has not been fully engaged, which results in a less competitive market with few manufacturers, and consequently, a low supply of products. Persistent challenges also exist in the scaling of malaria interventions, such as the fragmentation of malaria programmes. Further efforts are needed to: (1) Strengthen coordination among stakeholders and especially the private sector to inform decisions and mobilise resources. (2) Increase engagement of national stakeholders, particularly those in low-income and middle-income countries, in planning for and implementing R&D, launching and scaling proven malaria interventions. (3) Use financial incentives and other market-shaping strategies to encourage R&D for innovative malaria products and improve existing interventions. (4) Streamline and improve transparency of WHO's prequalification and guidelines processes to provide timely technical advice and strategies for different settings. (5) Increase effort to integrate malaria services into the broader primary healthcare system. (6) Generate evidence to inform policies on improving access to malaria interventions.
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    Strategic donor behaviour and country vulnerability in health aid transitions.
    (BMJ global health, 2023-11) Mao, Wenhui; McDade, Kaci Kennedy; Ogbuoji, Osondu; Yamey, Gavin; Bermeo, Sarah Blodgett

    Background

    When countries reach the middle-income threshold, many multilateral donors, including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), begin to withdraw their official development assistance (ODA), known as graduation. We hypothesised that bilateral donors might follow Gavi's lead, except in countries where they have strategic interests. We aim to understand how bilateral donors behave after a recipient country graduates from Gavi support and how bilateral donors might treat Gavi support countries differently, based on 'strategic interest'. We also aim to identify countries that were more vulnerable to 'simultaneous' transitions and financial cliffs after Gavi transition.

    Methods

    This is an observational dyadic analysis using longitudinal data. We collected country-level data on 77 Gavi-eligible countries between 2009 and 2018 and paired donor and recipient country in a specific year to conduct dyadic analysis. We included Gavi graduation status and Gavi disbursement as explanatory variables. We controlled for (1) donor-recipient relationship variables that represent potential strategic relationships (eg, distance between donor and recipient country) and (2) recipient-level characteristics (eg, population, income). We used Odinary Least Squares regression, Tobit and two-part model in Stata SE 15.0.

    Findings

    We found a country would receive $3.1 million less all sector ODA from a bilateral donor, and $0.6 million less health ODA, after they graduate from Gavi. For every additional 1% ODA a country would receive from Gavi, it would receive 0.14% more ODA and 0.16% more health ODA from individual bilateral donors. Gavi's graduation status or disbursement brought more change in percentage term to health ODA than to total ODA. Additionally, Gavi's graduation was observed to have a larger negative impact on bilateral ODA in the longer term. Countries that sent more migrants, had been colonised, and received more US military assistance tended to receive more ODA. There are similarities and differences across different donors and bilateral donors tend to provide more ODA to nearby countries and countries receiving fewer exports from the donor. We found that former colonies did not see a decline in aid after Gavi graduation.

    Conclusion

    Bilateral donors behave in a similar manner to Gavi when it comes to funding health systems in low and middle-income countries. Therefore, some countries may be at risk of losing donor resources for health from a multitude of sources around the same time. However, countries that have a strategic interest in bilateral donors may be spared from such funding cliffs. This research has important implications for global health donors' funding policies and approaches in addition to recipient countries' transition planning.