Page 171 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS129 Rivera-Galicia, L.F. et al.
4. Health costs
Gender-based violence is considered a public health problem because of
its effects on women's physical and mental health (in the short, medium and
long term). It has an important impact on health systems, due to the increase
in the use of health services.
However, the quantification of the use of health services by women victims
of gender violence is not complete. On the one hand, because the victims
often do not communicate that they are suffering gender violence. On the
other hand, because of the lack of resources and/or adequate training in the
health system professionals for their effective detection and registration.
To estimate the costs of gender violence in the health sector, the
methodology used is based on two major approaches to the accounting
method, using a bottom-up approach. Only the tangible direct costs for the
public sector are considered:
On the one hand, estimation 1 follows Zhang et al. (2012). It has been
applied to two alternative options (A and B): In Option A, the most
conservative, the total cost of gender violence in this category is estimated by
multiplying the number of victims of physical and/or sexual violence in the last
12 months, who consult the medical or psychological services, by the
estimated number of times they demand the service and its assigned unit cost.
In this case, the costs of health care services are € 254,123,003, and represent
the sum of the costs of healthcare itself (87% of the total cost), pharmacy costs
(3.1%), and complementary services (psychosocial services, training activities
and prevention policies, 9.9%).
In option B, the cost of gender violence is estimated as the product of the
number of women victims of any type of gender violence in the last 12 months
who consult the medical or psychological services, by the estimated number
of times they demand the service and its assigned unit cost. According to this
estimate, the costs of health care services are € 517,839,880 (91.8% healthcare,
3.3% pharmacy and 4.9% complementary services).
On the other hand, estimation 2 follows the methodology proposed by
Dubourg et al. (2005). According to this estimate, the cost of health care
services is € 2,483,646,332.

Table 2: Estimates of Health costs.
Estimation 1 Estimation 2
(Zhang et al. 2012) Dubourg et al. (2005)
OPTION A OPTION B
Victims of physical Victims of any type of Victims of physical
and/or sexual violence violence who contacted and/or sexual violence
who contacted healthcare services healthcare services (moderate or severe)

€ 254,123,003 € 517,839,880 € 2,483,646,332
Source: Adapted from Mañas-Alcón (2019).

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