Background:

The access to the quality health care service is the basic human right.  The high out of pocket payments identify weak health financing system of any country. The proposed study was an attempt to explore the level of out of pocket health care expenditure among households residing in slum area of Hyderabad, Sindh Pakistan.

Methodology:

Study Setting & Study Design: Community based descriptive cross sectional study conducted on three union councils of slum areas of Hyderabad. 

Study Population & Sample Size: The 327 elder household members of the designated areas were selected through stratified sampling technique.   

Data collection & Analysis: The structured questionnaire translated in local languages was used. Demographic variables along with household income as well as health care expenditure in various heads were the study variables. The categorical variables were measured by computing proportions. The numerical variables like monthly income & monthly health expenditures were calculated by means ± standard deviation. The statistical associations between various variables of interest were measured by applying Chi-square test at 0.05 level of significance.

Results: The majority of subjects (239) belonged to poor class; the 26.91% belonged to middle class.Surprisingly, the number of earning members appeared substantially low. A huge percentage (i.e. 91%), almost the entire population did spend on OPDs on monthly basis. The monthly household income had statistically significant association to out-of-pocket expenditure (p≤0.001).

Conclusion: A substansive number of people show deep concerns about imbalance in monthly income & out-of-pocket health expenditure which neccessitates to be properly addressed by health policy-makers.

Key words: Out-of-pocket, health, expenditure, households, slum areas.