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. 2013 Sep 6;58(1):11–21. doi: 10.1093/cid/cit570

Table 5.

Results of Baseline Analysis: Net Costs or Savings due to Pretravel Health Consultations Among Travelers to West Africaa

Stakeholder Cost Categories by Perspective Purpose of Travelb and Median Planned Length of Travelc
Business 9 d Leisure 14 d All Purposes 21 d VFRb 30 d
Healthcare payer's perspective
 Weighted average direct cost for treatment, US$d 25 250
 Cost of pretravel health consultation, chemoprophylaxis, and treatment of adverse events associated with chemoprophylaxis (Supplementary Appendix Table A2), $ 161.42 189.76 207.59 207.03
 Net cost/savings per person per trip, $e 13.65 (net savings) 82.32 (net savings) 199.14 (net savings) 371.64 (net savings)
  (Lower bound, upper bound) (−212.25, 613.72) (−240.08, 1003.94) (−246.79, 1571.12) (−218.43, 2324.12)
Traveler's perspective
 Weighted average out-of-pocket cost (direct plus indirect) for treatment, $d 3387
 Out-of-pocket cost of pretravel health consultation, chemoprophylaxis, and treatment of an adverse event associated with chemoprophylaxis (Supplementary Appendix Table A3), $ 43.78 44.15 44.70 45.58
 Net cost/saving per person per trip, $e −20.30 (net costs) −7.66 (net costs) 9.86 (net savings) 32.04 (net savings)
  (Lower bound, upper bound) (−100.72, 223.21) (−100.16, 357.19) (−99.51, 545.19) (−99.11, 787.85)

100% adherence for malaria chemoprophylaxis regimens was assumed.

Abbreviation: VFR, visiting friends and relatives.

a Costs were in US 2009 dollars. West Africa included Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo [1]. Travelers to West Africa were identified as those travelers who planned to visit 1 or more countries only in West Africa (Supplementary Appendix Section 1).

b For their pretravel health consultations, travelers were asked to report their purpose(s) of travel from the following (multiple choices were allowed): leisure, business, returning to region of origin of self or family to visit friends and relatives, adoption, providing medical care, receiving medical care, research/education, nonmedical service work, missionary work, military service, adventuring, attending large gathering or event, or other activities [8]. For this analysis, travelers who reported only 1 of the 3 purposes (ie, business, leisure, and VFR) were selected. All purposes denote all travelers to West Africa.

c The median planned length of travel for each category of the purposes of travel was calculated among travelers to West Africa (Supplementary Table A1).

d Treatment cost of a malaria case was a weighted averaged between costs for ambulatory and hospital medical care using the probability of each care among travelers to West Africa as the weight (Table 1).

e A negative value indicates that pretravel health consultation for malaria prevention will result in a net cost to healthcare payer or a traveler, whereas a positive value indicates a net savings to a healthcare payer or a traveler. The lower and upper ranges were calculated by using lower and upper values of input and cost parameters in Tables 1–3.