Author Description

Economic impact assessments play an essential role in supporting countries achieve their goals towards controlling air pollution and climate actions. The main objectives of this study were to assess the economic costs of selected diseases and road traffic injuries (RTI) to the public health sector, patients and their families in the metropolitan region of Accra, Ghana. The results shown that, although, all patients had some type of health care insurance, not all hospital costs were covered by this type of assistance. Patients and their families also faced high indirect costs, mainly related to the loss of income due to the illnesses. When we look at the distribution of indirect costs amongst those patients who work in the informal sector, costs were even more substantial for some categories of patients. Although air pollution affects everyone, the poor seem to suffer the most. About 45% of our sample were considered to be in the first and second quintiles of socioeconomic status (the poorest and poor), and the direct medical costs alone could represent double their annual earnings. In our sample, patients also refer to loans and selling their assets in order to cover hospital costs.