Aikins, Moses

Background: Health systems in low and lower-middle income countries, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa, often lack the specialized personnel and infrastructure to provide comprehensive care for elderly/ageing populations. Close- to-client community-based approaches are a low-cost way of providing basic care and social support for elderly populations in such resource-constrained settings and family caregivers play a crucial role in that regard.

Background: Low and middle income countries face many challenges in meeting their populations' mental health care needs. Though family caregiving is crucial to the management of severe mental health disabilities, such as schizophrenia, the economic costs borne by family caregivers often go unnoticed. In this study, we estimated the household economic costs of schizophrenia and quality of life of family caregivers in Ghana.; Methods: We used a cost of illness analysis approach.