Introduction: Access to the full gamut of comprehensive health care services at an affordable cost is very essential for an individual to lead a socially and economically productive life. But the health care cost, increasing manifold and mostly born out of pocket by the households, leads to either non utilization of health services or selling of assets and borrowing money especially among poor. This pushes them to further impoverishment. Most of this cost is incurred for drugs and diagnostics. Hence this study aims to find out the treatment cost of illness episodes, the sources of spending on treatment among slum dwellers and also their awareness regarding health insurance schemes. This cross sectional study was conducted in the slums under the field practice area of deptt. of community medicine, Gauhati Medical College. Through house to house visits the households reporting at least one member with an illness episode for which treatment was sought during the reference period were identified and included in the study. Results of the study revealed that for hospitalised episodes direct ie medical cost of treatment was Rs 5585.97 and Rs12293.87 in govt and private hospitals respectively. For non hospitalised episodes it was 1745.82 and 2702.36

in govt  and private hospitals respectively.