A Trial Calculation of the Costs Incurred by the Absences of Agricultural Co-opEmployees in Aichi Prefecture due to Novel Influenza / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

  With the spread of a novel H1N1 strain of influenza A around the world, the World Health Organization declared that the situation had entered the pandemic phase. In Japan, it had a major social impact, causing a great hit to the national economy. And there is every likelihood that the H1N1 influenza is going to break out a lot of people on the staff of the agricultural cooperatives in Aichi Prefecture, seriously affecting the activities of agricultural cooperatives too. Based on the amount of damage from the flu presumed by the Japanese government and various kinds of statistical material, we worked out how much the flu would cost the agricultural co-ops in the prefecture by infecting their employees and involved their family. At an absence rate of 20%, the lowest rate presupposed by the government, our calculation showed that the extra costs would amount to 740 million yen altogether. If the rete of abscense from work was given 40%, the largest estimate by the government, the costs rocketed to highly 1.48 billion yen. A check on the situation of individual co-ops revealed that some of the co-ops would burden an extra cost of well over 100 million yen. From these findings, we concluded that to minimize the effects of the flu appropriate, effective countermeasures have to be taken after sufficient information about the novel influenza virus was collected and analyzed carefully.