Counting the cost: assessing the full economic cost of ill-health in West Darfur, Sudan
331 households were sampled and data collected on demographics, the prevalence of ill-health and healthcare-seeking behaviour
Abstract
During Valid Evaluations’ 4-year study of multiyear humanitarian financing (MYHF), ill-health repeatedly emerged as a factor keeping people in poverty and vulnerability. Despite the importance of this issue, there is a lack of information on the economic cost of ill-health for households. Isolated studies have quantified the direct costs of a visit to a clinic, but no specific studies are available for Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that aggregate the full economic impact of illness. This makes policy development a real challenge.
In response to this lack of data, Valid Evaluations has undertaken 2 stand-alone studies on the subject: one in West Darfur, the subject of this paper; and a study in North Kivu, DRC, published separately.
For this study, data was collected in the 5 villages where Valid Evaluations has conducted research for the overall MYHF evaluation. In all, 331 households were randomly sampled and quantitative data collected on household demographics, the prevalence of ill-health over the previous 12 months for all members of the household and healthcare-seeking behaviour in each case of ill-health. Interviews were conducted at the end of November and early December 2017.
This report is part of ‘Building resilience and responding to crises in fragile and conflict-affected states: A thematic evaluation of DFID’s multi-year approaches to chronic/protracted humanitarian crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan and Pakistan’ programme
Citation
Levine, S. and Kusnierek, A. (2019); Counting the cost: assessing the full economic cost of ill-health in West Darfur, Sudan. London: ODI; pp 26
Links
Counting the cost: assessing the full economic cost of ill-health in West Darfur, Sudan