Cancer in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: An Economic Overview

Abstract

Health care is informed first and foremost by scientific and medical understanding of how to treat and prevent disease. Economics can, however, provide useful insights to inform policy in the design and implementation of the systems to provide health care, as well as in the process of prioritizing interventions to make the best use of scarce resources. Treating a single cancer patient may require the coordination of many inputs and may cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in high-income countries (HICs). Ongoing population cancer screening and early detection also require considerable coordination, including treatment for cases detected, and costs. Finally, although knowledge of cancer prevention is inadequate, prevention can be a costly endeavor—as demonstrated by the large sums spent on behavior change promotion (such as smoking cessation) or on vaccines to prevent cancer, such as against human papilloma virus to prevent cervical cancer and hepatitis B virus to prevent liver cancer—and economics can be informative.The second section of this chapter reviews how the availability of resources for cancer care varies by economic status, using the World Bank’s categories of low-income countries (LICs), middle-income countries (MICs) (comprising lower-middle-income countries and upper-middle-income countries), and HICs. At the same time, economy is not destiny. Countries at the same level of economic development differ because other factors intervene. Urbanization affects the patterns of cancer and the ability to access care. Local champions, governmental political leadership, and international partnerships can all loosen the constraints of local economic resources. Conversely, some countries are underachievers in cancer care despite their income level, perhaps because of leadership failures.The third section reviews the cost-effectiveness of interventions for cancer care, where care is here defined to include prevention. The cost-effectiveness of interventions has been well studied in HICs, but much less so in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This section summarizes the literature on the economics of cancer care in LMICs; the section also draws on the literature from HICs, particularly for cancer treatment, in areas where reliable studies for LMICs are particularly scarce. It may be possible to make inferences for one country using results from another country; the validity of these inferences rises with the extent of the similarities in the two countries. Where possible, we separate out the findings for high-income economies in Asia, since they are likely to be more relevant for LMICs in this region than the results from North America or Western Europe.We use the resource grouping suggested by Anderson and others (see chapter 3) for the Breast Health Global Initiative and apply this to other cancers. In this framework, facility resource environments fall into four categories of resource availability: Basic Limited Enhanced Maximal These categories are correlated with the World Bank income groupings. LICs have a preponderance of Basic facilities, rural areas in MICs have more facilities with Limited capabilities, urban areas in MICs have more facilities with Enhanced capabilities, and much of the population in HICs has access to facilities with Maximal capabilities. The implications for the availability of resources specific to cancer care are described. This section requires some interpolation on the authors’ part because of the paucity of previous work in the area and is subject to further validation by experts.The fourth and final section contains conclusions, consisting of summary recommendations of packages of cancer care appropriate for each of the four resource environments, as well as priority areas where further research is required. The appropriateness of a package is defined by feasibility (those resources can be expected to exist or could exist with reasonable investments) and by likely cost-effectiveness (within the limits of available data). Although there are internationally validated resource-specific care guidelines for breast cancer (the Breast Health Global Initiative), no such guidelines are available as yet for other cancers. The packages presented here have been validated in consultation with the chapter authors of this volume (chapters 3 through 8), but need to be further refined by expert consultation.