Estimating the economic burden of influenza on the older population in Malaysia.

Autor: Mad Tahir NS; Department of Public Health Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.; Ministry of Health Malaysia, Federal Government Administrative Centre, Putrajaya, Malaysia., Ismail A; Department of Public Health Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia., Aljunid SM; International Centre for Casemix and Clinical Coding, Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.; Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, School of Medicine, International Medical University, Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia., Abdul Aziz AF; Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia., Azzeri A; Public Health Unit, Department of Primary Health Care, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia., Alkhodary AA; Ministry of Health-Gaza governorates, Gaza, Palestine.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2023 Nov 16; Vol. 18 (11), pp. e0294260. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Nov 16 (Print Publication: 2023).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294260
Abstrakt: Background: Influenza is a contagious respiratory illness that can cause life-threatening complications among high-risk groups. Estimating the economic burden of influenza is essential to guide policy-making on influenza vaccination programmes, especially in resource-limited settings. This study aimed to estimate the economic burden of influenza on older adults (those aged ≥60 years) in Malaysia from the provider's perspective.
Methods: The main data source in this study was the MY-DRG Casemix database of a teaching hospital in Malaysia. Cases with principal and secondary diagnoses coded in the International Classification of Diseases version 10 (ICD-10) as J09, J10.0, J10.1, J10.8, J11.0, J11.1, J11.8, J12.8, and J12.9, which represent influenza and its complications, were included in the study. The direct cost of influenza at all severity levels was calculated from the casemix data and guided by a clinical pathway developed by experts. The effect of the variations in costs and incidence rate of influenza for both the casemix and clinical pathway costing approaches was assessed with sensitivity analysis.
Results: A total of 1,599 inpatient and 407 outpatient influenza cases were identified from the MY-DRG Casemix database. Most hospitalised cases were aged <18 years (90.6%), while 77 cases (4.8%) involved older people. Mild, moderate, and severe cases comprised 56.5%, 35.1%, and 8.4% of cases, respectively. The estimated average annual direct costs for managing mild, moderate, and severe influenza were RM2,435 (USD579), RM6,504 (USD1,549), and RM13,282 (USD3,163), respectively. The estimated total annual economic burden of influenza on older adults in Malaysia was RM3.28 billion (USD782 million), which was equivalent to 10.7% of the Ministry of Health Malaysia budget for 2020. The sensitivity analysis indicated that the influenza incidence rate and cost of managing severe influenza were the most important factors influencing the total economic burden.
Conclusions: Overall, our results demonstrated that influenza imposes a substantial economic burden on the older Malaysian population. The high cost of influenza suggested that further efforts are required to implement a preventive programme, such as immunisation for older people, to reduce the disease and economic burdens.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Mad Tahir et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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