SOCIO-ECONOMICAL FIELD
The cost of care associated with Parkinson diseases includes both direct and indirect costs.
Direct costs are expenditures for medical and non-medical services needed as a result of the
illness. Direct medical costs include expenditures for pharmaceuticals, physician office visits,
emergency room care, and inpatient hospital visits. Direct nonmedical costs are costs incurred
by the patient for special care, including costs of transportation and special equipment or
modifications to the home or car. Indirect costs are related to changes in worker productivity,
including absence from work and decreased earning ability. There are also intangible costs
associated with the pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life associated with the illness.
Although intangible costs are difficult to quantify in monetary terms and are often omitted from
economic analyses, they are important to consider when examining the overall impact of PD.
Though this disease is diagnosed clinically but can be confirmed by CT scan and MRI brain
which are costly and become difficult to be borne to patient.
Medicines are generally very expensive which a poor patient cannot bear. All the above factors
lead to the draining of his bank balance.
Socially the patient finds him not presentable and he starts withdrawing himself from social
Gathering, parties, functions and gets confined within the cemented walls at home .This
limitation of his movement in the social circle gives birth to extreme depression and other grave
psychiatric symptoms.
At a certain time of his disease the patient becomes completely dependent on his care taker and
his assistance for 24 X 7 hours. Hence the loss/engagement of two earning persons thereby a
monetary loss to the family and the nation. Moreover since the disease is male dominating, the
loss incurred is too much to the family. This further adds up to the deteriorating psychological
condition of the patient in Toto.
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