In Am J Trop Med Hyg 87: 796ā805 by Shepard and others, the authors recently uncovered a labeling error. In columns 3 and 6 of Table 5, on page 801 of this article, they endeavored to report direct costs per ambulatory and hospitalized dengue case. The numbers presented actually corresponded to the costs per outpatient visit and per bed-day, respectively. Due to that error, their subsequent calculations were also incorrect. Applying the methods in the article with the appropriate data, the corrected version of Table 5 is:
Cost of dengue illness by sector, setting, and component, Malaysia
Sector | Ambulatory | Hospitalized | Indirect deaths* | Total | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Indirect | Direct | Total | Indirect | Direct | Total | |||
Estimated costs per case (2009 US$) | ||||||||
Public | 176.36 | 297.93 | 474.29 | 200.55 | 613.65 | 814.20 | 53,336.50 | 668.49 |
Private | 176.36 | 168.68 | 345.03 | 200.55 | 697.88 | 898.43 | 53,336.50 | 628.90 |
Total | 176.36 | 239.85 | 416.21 | 200.55 | 651.50 | 852.05 | 53,336.50 | 650.70 |
Estimated aggregate costs from EF-adjusted dengue cases (58% ambulatory; 2009 US$1,000s) | ||||||||
Public | 8,851 | 14,952 | 23,803 | 7,288 | 22,301 | 29,589 | 4,451 | 57,843 |
Private | 7,223 | 6,908 | 14,131 | 5,948 | 20,697 | 26,645 | 3,633 | 44,409 |
Total | 16,073 | 21,860 | 37,933 | 13,236 | 42,998 | 56,234 | 8,084 | 102,252 |
Rangeā | Ā | Ā | (17,150ā233,637) | Ā | Ā | (44,197ā88,593) | Ā | (77,942ā310,657) |
EF = expansion factor.
The unit cost of death reported is the average cost; the actual values were estimated on the basis of the age distribution of reported deaths caused by dengue in 2009 (Ministry of Health Malaysia, unpublished data.
The range corresponds to the 95% certainty levels (centered on the median) in our projections, and is given by the simultaneous variation of parameters as indicated in Table 3.
As a result of the labeling error, the article mistakenly reported an economic burden of dengue illness of US$56 million or approximately US$2.03 per capita. The correction doubled the result. The corrected estimate of the economic burden of dengue illness in Malaysia is US$102 (95% CI: 78ā311) million per year (MYR 359.79 million), approximately US$3.72 (MYR 13.08) per capita.
In Am J Trop Med Hyg 87: 883 by Salant and others, the word āgranulosusā was misspelled in the title of the paper. The journal regrets this error.
In the February print version of Am J Trop Med Hyg 88: 376ā380 by LaRocque and others, the acknowledgments should have read as follows:
Members of the Global TravEpiNet Consortium. Members of the Global TravEpiNet Consortium (in alphabetical order) include George M. Abraham, Saint Vincent Hospital (Worcester, MA); Salvador Alvarez, Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville, FL); Vernon Ansdell and Johnnie A. Yates, Travel Medicine Clinic, Kaiser Permanente (Honolulu, HI); Elisha H. Atkins, Chelsea HealthCare Center (Chelsea, MA); John Cahill, Travel and Immunization Center, St. Luke's-Roosevelt (New York, NY); Holly K. Birich and Dagmar Vitek, Salt Lake Valley Health Department (Salt Lake, Utah); Bradley A. Connor, New York Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine, Cornell University (New York, NY); Roberta Dismukes and Phyllis Kozarsky, Emory TravelWell, Emory University (Atlanta, GA); Ronke Dosunmu, JourneyHealth (Maywood, NJ); Jeffrey A. Goad, International Travel Medicine Clinic, University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA); Stefan Hagmann, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center (Bronx, NY); DeVon Hale, International Travel Clinic, University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT); Noreen A. Hynes, John Hopkins Travel and Tropical Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, John Hopkins School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD); Frederique Jacquerioz and Susan McLellan, Tulane University (New Orleans, LA); Mark Knouse, Keystone Travel Medicine, Lehigh Valley Health Network (Allentown, PA); Jennifer Lee, Travel and Immunization Center, Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago, IL); Regina C. LaRocque and Edward T. Ryan, Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA); Alawode Oladele and Hanna Demeke, DeKalb County Board of Health Travel Services-DeKalb North and Central-T.O. Vinson Centers (Decatur, GA); Roger Pasinski and Amy E. Wheeler, Revere HealthCare Center (Revere, MA); Sowmya R. Rao, University of Massachusetts (Worcester, MA); Jessica Rosen, Infectious Diseases and Travel Medicine, Georgetown University (Washington, DC); Brian S. Schwartz, Travel Medicine and Immunization Clinic, University of California (San Francisco, CA); William Stauffer and Patricia Walker, HealthPartners Travel Medicine Clinics (St. Paul, Minnesota); Lori Tishler, Phyllis Jen Center for Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston, MA): and Joseph Vinetz, Travel Clinic, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of California-San Diego School of Medicine (La Jolla, CA).