Cost of illness of diabetes mellitus in Indonesia: a systematic review

OBJECTIVES

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a group of insulin metabolism disorder that affects the socio-economic conditions of the community. The cost of treating diabetes in 2019 was USD 760 billion and by 2045 there are predicted to be 700 million people living with diabetes. The purpose of this systematic review was to provide an overview of the economic burden caused by Diabetes Mellitus for the government, health care providers, and for the community.

METHODS

This systematic review was carried out by considering the related studies about the cost of illness, evaluation of disease costs, or therapeutic costs for various types of diabetes mellitus that were published in both English and Indonesian. The search engines PUBMED, DOAJ, SCOPUS, SCIENCE DIRECT, and GOOGLE SCHOLAR were used without date published restrictions.

RESULTS

A systematic search identifies 18 eligible studies conducted in various regions in Indonesia. The study was retrospective with variation in their perspectives and methods to estimate the diabetes cost. Drug cost was the major contributor to direct medical cost followed by complications cost while other cost was affected by transportation cost, productivity losses, and time spent by family accompanying patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Diabetes mellitus creates a significant financial burden and affects the health care system as well as the individual and society as a whole. Research about the cost of diabetes in the future should be carried out on a large scale in order to get a more specific cost estimation.