Overcoming data limitations: design of a multicomponent study for estimating the economic burden of dengue in India.

ABSTRACT

Dengue is emerging as a serious global health problem. Estimating the economic burden of dengue is crucial to inform policy-makers of the disease’s societal impact and may assist in implementing appropriate control strategies. However, developing such studies is constrained by limited data and other challenges. This paper shows how analyzing hospital records carefully can adjust surveillance data for possible under-reporting and misdiagnosis of dengue, merging information on treatment patterns with macro costing to estimate the cost of dengue episode by age and severity in various treatment settings, and combining adjusted surveillance data with cost information can estimate the aggregate cost of dengue illness in India and in other endemic countries.