PNS34 Towards a Healthcare Cost Catalogue for Middle EAST and North Africa: A Systematic Review of Costs Reported in Health Economic Publications from the GULF Region 1995-2019

Abstract

To review costs of illness and unit costs that health economic papers published from the Gulf region, as part of aproject systematically reviewing health economic research in 17 countries from the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. PRISMA guidelines were followed. A Pubmed search was conducted up to 15th December 2019. English language full-text articles of original research on humans were included if the local population from Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was involved and unit- or composite costs items for 1995-2019 were reported. Eligible studies from previous systematic reviews from MENA were also included. All data were extracted in a multi-stage peer-review process involving two researchers. From 1646 citations of full-text English articles and 3 systematic reviews, we identified 185 eligible papers reporting costs from MENA. Out of those, 96 (51.9%) papers involved the Gulf region, primarily KSA (n=53, 55.2%), Oman (n=16, 16.7 %) and UAE (n=9, 9.4%). Altogether 1275 cost items were reported, and 6.3 % of the papers were multi-country studies. The costing year was 2015-2019 for 39.4 % of the cost items. Most costs were reported in endocrine and metabolic- (n=271, 21.3 %), followed by digestive- (n=116, 9.1 %) and respiratory diseases (n=109, 8.5 %). From all cost items 86.0%, 4.8%, 3.2% and 6.0% were direct healthcare-, direct non-healthcare-, indirect- and total costs, respectively. The source was primary research for 70.4% of the costs, secondary local data for 6.9%, secondary foreign data for 4.9%, modelling for 5.5%, and assumption, estimation or other methods for 12.2%. Gulf region is leading in healthcare-cost publications in MENA. The focus is mainly on direct healthcare costs and there is shortage of data in important medical fields. A cost-catalogue could facilitate health economic research in the MENA region.