Tokatlioglu Yagmur, Sulku Seher Nur
Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University Department of Econometrics, Ankara, Turkey.
Prev Med Rep. 2023 Sep 7;36:102400. doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2023.102400. eCollection 2023 Dec.
BACKGROUND & AIM: COVID-19 pandemic caused significant barriers to maintain health services. Our study determines the frequency and significant determinants of unmet health needs in Istanbul both in 2019, a pre-pandemic year, and in 2021, a pandemic year and compares the results COVID-19 era to a prior to pandemic year.
As our study is the first questing Istanbul experience, we estimate the frequencies and determinants of unmet healthcare need among +15 population using TurkStat's Income and Living Conditions Survey Data via Generalized Linear Models (GLMs).
We found that the most prominent barriers were late appointment dates and financial difficulty both before and during the pandemic. According to our findings, women and those having any chronic disease become significantly more likely to have unmet health needs during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic period. Indeed, the ones belonging to the lowest income group and having lower level perceived health were disadvantaged with higher change of unmet needs both prior to and during the pandemic. Furthermore, the frequency of the Istanbulers who had unmet healthcare needs increased more than 1.5 time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As unmet healthcare needs due to COVID-19 jeopardizing the healthcare systems, it is important to comprehend the causes of unmet healthcare demands during infectious disease outbreaks in order to prioritize the right policies and protection strategies for the most vulnerable ones.
新冠疫情给维持医疗服务造成了重大障碍。我们的研究确定了2019年（疫情前一年）和2021年（疫情期间）伊斯坦布尔未满足的健康需求的频率及重要决定因素，并将新冠疫情时代的结果与疫情前一年进行比较。
由于我们的研究是首次探索伊斯坦布尔的情况，我们通过广义线性模型（GLMs），利用土耳其统计局的收入和生活条件调查数据，估计了15岁及以上人群中未满足的医疗需求的频率和决定因素。
我们发现，最突出的障碍在疫情之前和期间都是预约日期晚和经济困难。根据我们的研究结果，与疫情前相比，女性和患有任何慢性病的人在疫情期间更有可能有未满足的健康需求。事实上，属于最低收入群体且自我感觉健康水平较低的人在疫情之前和期间都处于不利地位，未满足需求的变化更大。此外，在新冠疫情期间，伊斯坦布尔有未满足医疗需求的人的频率增加了超过1.5倍。
由于新冠疫情导致的未满足医疗需求危及医疗系统，了解传染病爆发期间未满足医疗需求的原因，以便为最脆弱人群确定正确的政策和保护策略的优先级非常重要。
