Table 4.

Prevalence of catastrophic costs among patients with tuberculosis in Limpopo Province, South Africa, by catastrophic cost definition and lost time estimation (n = 327)

	Method for estimating lost health care-seeking time*
	Primary analysis	Sensitivity analyses
Catastrophic cost definition	Study population, median wage n (%)	Limpopo Province, median wage n (%)	Income quintile, mean wage n (%)	Participant Estimated n (%)	Estimate as zero n (%)
20% of annual income†	99 (30)	101 (31)	101 (31)	90 (28)	87 (27)
Minimum cost threshold‡	90 (28)	92 (28)	92 (28)	88 (27)	84 (26)
SAMPI threshold§	80 (24)	82 (25)	82 (25)	76 (23)	73 (22)

^*Methods for estimating lost health care-seeking time were as follows (left to right): 1) median wage of the analytic population (self-reported, excluding income from social grants), 2) median wage in Limpopo Province, 3) mean wage within quintiles of the analytic population, based on self-reported, pre-symptom household income, 4) participants’ own estimate of lost wages or lost income-generating opportunities during health care-seeking based on a summary interview question, and 5) estimation of care-seeking time at zero value (i.e., time spent care-seeking contributing nothing to episode costs).

^†20% of annual income with no threshold applied to the 10% of participants with no reported income.

^‡20% of annual income with a threshold to reclassify costs as non-catastrophic if participants who reported no household income experienced out-of-pocket costs <ZAR100 (US$7.70), or if total episode health care-seeking time was less than the study mean of 20 h.

^§20% of annual income with a threshold to reclassify costs as non-catastrophic if participants who reported no household income were not in the lowest socioeconomic placement category of the SAMPI.

SAMPI = South Africa Multidimensional Poverty Index; ZAR = South African rand; US$ = US dollar.