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Campylobacter, acute gastroenteritis costs Swiss health care up to $50 million yearly
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An analysis of health care costs associated with campylobacteriosis and acute gastroenteritis suggested that this condition costs the Swiss health care sector up to approximately $50.4 million annually.
Further, individual case management costs for acute gastroenteritis ranged from $34 to $5,444, while laboratory-confirmed Campylobacter spp. infections led to direct health care costs of $202 to $1,165, according to the study recently published in Epidemiology and Infection.
“These cost estimates are very conservative,” Daniel Mäusezahl, PhD, epidemiologist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, said in a press release. “The economic costs, such as absences from work, as well as other indirect costs have not been taken into account yet.”
Heaviest burden in primary care
Using data retrieved from the Swiss Sentinel Surveillance Network and the National Notification System for Infectious Diseases, Mäusezahl, Claudia Schmutz, MSc, PhD student at the University of Basel, and colleagues calculated the approximate number of positive Campylobacter diagnostic tests and acute gastroenteritis cases occurring annually within the country. To construct analytical models based on four separate patient management strategies, they extrapolated total health care costs for each management strategy by interviewing general practitioners and examining expense records collected in 2012. The researchers compiled these data and applied the cost models to the annual population of campylobacteriosis and acute gastroenteritis estimates to determine their annual health care burden.
In 2012, there were an estimated 77,798 Campylobacter spp. tests conducted in Switzerland. In the same year, there were 8,480 registered cases of campylobacteriosis and 1,348 reported hospitalizations.
The cost per case ranged from about $34 for patients consulting a physician without a stool sample, to $5,440 for those hospitalized with infection. Health care costs for laboratory-confirmed cases ranged from $202 to $1,165 (median $523). The researchers’ estimate for total annual health care costs related to Campylobacter spp. ranged from $32.7 million to $50.4 million, and represented $12.5 million to $23.2 million for general practitioner services, $8.7 million to $10.3 million for laboratory diagnostics, $5 million to $9.7 million for medications and $7.2 million for hospitalizations.
While these findings represent the direct cost of campylobacteriosis and acute gastroenteritis hospitalization, the true socioeconomic burden is still unknown, the researchers wrote. Unreported cases, productivity loss, out-of-pocket medication expenses, disease complications and years of lost life could each escalate the true impact of this infection.
“The total cost of diarrhea as a common illness may be considerably higher,” Schmutz said in the press release. “It is astonishing that so little is done in terms of prevention regarding this common disease.”
Global norovirus infections cost $60 billion annually
In a cost analysis of gastrointestinal illness published in PLoS One in April, researchers estimated the worldwide financial burden of norovirus gastroenteritis at $60 million annually.
Sarah M. Bartsch, MPH, researcher at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues constructed a computational simulation model capable of estimating economic burden by age, country income and cost-type. They collected global and regional incidence data from the Foodborne Disease Epidemiology Reference Group, and used these to calculate overall disease burden within four stratified age groups. When determining costs, the model assumed everyone with the illness accrued lost productive days, sought medical care at previously reported frequencies and, if applicable, obtained hospitalization at rates similar to those observed within the United States.
Approximately 699 million norovirus illnesses (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 489 million-1,086 million) and 219,000 deaths (95% UI, 171,000-277,000) are estimated to occur each year across all age groups, the researchers wrote. While these amounts led to a median $4.2 billion (95% UI, 3.2-5.7 billion) in direct health care costs, the addition of lost productivity resulted in an overall societal cost of $60.3 billion (95% UI, 44.4-83.4 billion). The majority of this was attributed to infections among children aged younger than 5 years, who represented $39.8 billion of the annual burden. High-income countries were responsible for 62% of global health system costs, despite similar disease incidence among low-, medium- and high-income nations.
“You only seem to hear about it when people get sick on a cruise ship or at a restaurant, but norovirus is everywhere,” Bartsch said in a press release. “If we don’t focus on norovirus and teach people how to prevent it, little headway will be made to combat it.” – by Dave Muoio
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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