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An Assessment of Glycaemic Control and Modes of Health Financing among Type 2 Diabetic Patients Attending a Teaching Hospital in South-western Nigeria.

BACKGROUND
Type 2 diabetes mellitus can be a major drain on resources due to lifelong treatment and risk of catastrophic expenditure from treatment of complications. The prevalence has been projected to rise to alarming levels in developing countries. This study aimed to assess the levels of, and associations between good glycaemic control among patients with type 2 diabetes and their modes of financing healthcare.


METHODS
In this hospital based descriptive cross-sectional study, 260 patients being managed for type 2 diabetes at the outpatient clinics of Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos were recruited by systematic random sampling method. All participants received a HBA1C test to assess glycaemic control and a composite interviewer administered questionnaire adapted from the MMAS-8 and diabetes care profile to assess medication adherence, modes of financing and other factors related to disease management.


RESULTS
Of the 260 study participants, 34.62% (90) had good glycaemic control. In the mode of health care financing only 15% (39) paid by health insurance (NHIS), while 85% of the respondents' payment was by out-of-pocket (OOP) payment. About half of these OOP payments were made by family, friends and others (in this study, a proxy for informal means of pooling finances). Significant associations were found between glycaemic control and adherence (2 13.93, p=0.001), glycaemic control and mode of payment (2 15.30, p=0.0000) and also adherence and mode of payment (2 16.59, p =0.002).


CONCLUSION
In this study, only about a third of patients with type 2 diabetes achieved good glycaemic control, most patients used OOP financing and patients with OOP financing had poorer adherence and poorer glycaemic control. There is a need to scale up health insurance to improve health outcomes in diabetes management and protect people in developing countries from the burden of health care costs of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes.