Assessing Universal Health Coverage for Breast Cancer Management

Book excerpt: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women that affects mostly those in middle and older age groups in most parts of the world. The incidence is showing an increasing trend affecting younger women and the cost to prevent, treat and manage this chronic disease is continuously escalating. Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is an initiative by World Health Organisation that encourages policy makers in all countries in the world to organise their health systems that are responsive in providing access to quality health care to every citizen in need of health services without facing the financial hardship. Malaysia health system has been well developed and was said to have achieved universal health coverage based on the easy access to primary and secondary health care services in the public sector. In this book, we present our effort to assess if Malaysia provides UHC for preventive, curative and palliative to breast cancer patients . At the inception of the study, we embarked on the development of a composite index to assess the overall status of UHC. This is followed by an extensive research to explore the extent of financial coverage for management of breast cancer. Over 300 patients in various stages of the breast cancer attending the selected public tertiary hospitals were interviewed and their medical records reviewed to assess their health spending and to estimate the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure. The book is the first of its kind that provides comprehensive real-world data on universal coverage for breast cancer patients in the world.