Comparison of the costs of different treatments for child neumonia

Abstract

We compared the costs of treatment of severe.noncomplicated child pneumonia, in four different systems of hospital attention (private, prepaid, compulsory health plan and economic plan)with those of ambulatory treatment with cefixime; also a comparison was made between the costs of treatment of moderate child pneumonia with ambulatoy cefixime and with the WHO-recommended scheme with trimetoprim sulfametoxazole. The costs of ambulatory cefixime treatment of severe pneumonia were significantly lower than those at hospital in private practice, prepaid medicine and compulsory health plan (pO.O5). This difference persisted even when the analysis was limited to the cost of drugs. On the other hand, treatment of moderate pneumonia with trimetoprim-sulfametoxazole was cheaper than ambulatory cefixime