Author(s)

Mohamed M. Shoukri¹, Bright Varghese², Sahal Al-Hajoj², Futwan Al-Mohanna³

¹National Biotechnology Centre, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
²Mycobacteriology Research Section, Department of Infection and Immunity, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
³Department of Cell Biology, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

It is well known that the number of people with Tuberculosis (TB) and those who develop multidrug resistance (MDR) are the fundamental components that affect the total cost of treatment of TB. This paper has two-fold objectives. Firstly, we use the Generalized Linear Regression Models (GLM) to predict the future count of persons with TB and MDR. Due to the fact that assessment of TB cost is methodologically difficult, and compounded with the lack of concrete information about the treatment cost in Saudi Arabia, our second objective is to use cost information from the EU countries as proxy to estimate the cost of treating TB. The cost predictions provide essential information that is part of the evidence needed for budgeting and financing the health care facilities of TB services, especially with respect to avoiding under-estimation of the cost of TB-MDR treatment.

Infectious Diseases, Negative Binomial Model, TB Cost, MDR

Shoukri, M. , Varghese, B. , Al-Hajoj, S. and Al-Mohanna, F. (2014) Prediction of the Number of Tuberculosis Cases and Estimation of Its Treatment Cost in Saudi Arabia Using Proxy Information. Open Journal of Statistics, 4, 726-735. doi: 10.4236/ojs.2014.49067.