Summary
Authors used publicly available data from WHO's Global Tuberculosis Programme for tuberculosis burden in terms of yearly incidence, prevalence, and mortality per 100,000 people, and social protection data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), expressed as the percentage of national gross domestic product (GDP) spent on social protection programs (excluding health). Data from ILO were from 146 countries covering the years between 2000 and 2012.
The study used descriptive assessments to examine levels of social protection and tuberculosis burden for each country, then used these assessments to inform our fully adjusted multivariate regression models. The models controlled for economic output, adult HIV prevalence, health expenditure, population density, the percentage of foreign-born residents, and the strength of the national tuberculosis treatment program, and also incorporated a country-level fixed effect to adjust for clustering of data points within countries.
Overall, social protection spending levels were inversely associated with tuberculosis prevalence, incidence, and mortality.
