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Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon

BACKGROUND: Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in African countries. It is one of the leading causes of hospital visits and hospitalization in pediatric wards for children under 5 years old. Interestingly however, the economic burden of this disease remains unknown in th...

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Autores principales: Moukoumbi Lipenguet, Gaëtan, Ngoungou, Edgard Brice, Ibinga, Euloge, Engohang-Ndong, Jean, Wittwer, Jérôme
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325277/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34330288
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03862-4
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author Moukoumbi Lipenguet, Gaëtan
Ngoungou, Edgard Brice
Ibinga, Euloge
Engohang-Ndong, Jean
Wittwer, Jérôme
author_facet Moukoumbi Lipenguet, Gaëtan
Ngoungou, Edgard Brice
Ibinga, Euloge
Engohang-Ndong, Jean
Wittwer, Jérôme
author_sort Moukoumbi Lipenguet, Gaëtan
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in African countries. It is one of the leading causes of hospital visits and hospitalization in pediatric wards for children under 5 years old. Interestingly however, the economic burden of this disease remains unknown in these endemic countries including Gabon. The purpose of this study is to assess the direct hospital cost for the management of malaria in children under 5 years old at the Libreville University Hospital Centre (CHUL, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Libreville) in Gabon. METHODS: This research work is a retrospective study using a comprehensive review of medical records of patients seen at the CHUL over a two-year period extending from January 2018 through December 2019. The study focused on children under 5 years old, admitted for malaria in the paediatric ward of the CHUL. The analysis targeted specifically direct hospital costs, which excluded salary and wages of health care workers. The monetary currency used in this study was the CFA francs, as that currency is the one used in Central Africa (as reference, 1 Euro = 656 CFA francs). RESULTS: For the set timeframe, 778 patient records matched the study criteria. Thus, out of 778 admitted patients, 58.4% were male while 41.5% were female. Overall, the average age was 13.2 months (± 13.8 months). The total cost incurred by the hospital for the management of these 778 malaria patients was 94,922,925 CFA francs (144,699.58 €), for an average expense per patient topping at 122,008 CFA francs (185.99 €). The highest expenditure items were hospitalizations (44,200,000 CFA francs, 67,378.1 €), followed by drugs (26,394,425 CFA francs, 40,235.4 €) and biomedical examinations (14,036,000 CFA francs, 21,396.34 €). CONCLUSION: The financial burden for managing malaria in the paediatric ward seems to be very high, not only for the hospital, but also for families in spite of the government medical insurance coverage in some cases. These findings bring new insights as to the urgency to develop policies that foster preventive initiatives over curative approaches in the management of malaria in children in endemic countries.
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spelling pubmed-83252772021-08-02 Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon Moukoumbi Lipenguet, Gaëtan Ngoungou, Edgard Brice Ibinga, Euloge Engohang-Ndong, Jean Wittwer, Jérôme Malar J Research BACKGROUND: Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in African countries. It is one of the leading causes of hospital visits and hospitalization in pediatric wards for children under 5 years old. Interestingly however, the economic burden of this disease remains unknown in these endemic countries including Gabon. The purpose of this study is to assess the direct hospital cost for the management of malaria in children under 5 years old at the Libreville University Hospital Centre (CHUL, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Libreville) in Gabon. METHODS: This research work is a retrospective study using a comprehensive review of medical records of patients seen at the CHUL over a two-year period extending from January 2018 through December 2019. The study focused on children under 5 years old, admitted for malaria in the paediatric ward of the CHUL. The analysis targeted specifically direct hospital costs, which excluded salary and wages of health care workers. The monetary currency used in this study was the CFA francs, as that currency is the one used in Central Africa (as reference, 1 Euro = 656 CFA francs). RESULTS: For the set timeframe, 778 patient records matched the study criteria. Thus, out of 778 admitted patients, 58.4% were male while 41.5% were female. Overall, the average age was 13.2 months (± 13.8 months). The total cost incurred by the hospital for the management of these 778 malaria patients was 94,922,925 CFA francs (144,699.58 €), for an average expense per patient topping at 122,008 CFA francs (185.99 €). The highest expenditure items were hospitalizations (44,200,000 CFA francs, 67,378.1 €), followed by drugs (26,394,425 CFA francs, 40,235.4 €) and biomedical examinations (14,036,000 CFA francs, 21,396.34 €). CONCLUSION: The financial burden for managing malaria in the paediatric ward seems to be very high, not only for the hospital, but also for families in spite of the government medical insurance coverage in some cases. These findings bring new insights as to the urgency to develop policies that foster preventive initiatives over curative approaches in the management of malaria in children in endemic countries. BioMed Central 2021-07-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8325277/ /pubmed/34330288 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03862-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Moukoumbi Lipenguet, Gaëtan
Ngoungou, Edgard Brice
Ibinga, Euloge
Engohang-Ndong, Jean
Wittwer, Jérôme
Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon
title Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon
title_full Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon
title_fullStr Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon
title_full_unstemmed Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon
title_short Evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in Gabon
title_sort evaluation of direct costs associated with the management of clinical stage of malaria in children under five years old in gabon
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325277/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34330288
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03862-4
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