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Authors’ response
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Sir,
We thank Kaushal1 for the comments on our paper on demographics of animal bite victims in Mumbai2. We agree that the indirect costs including wages lost for a daily wage earner or salary saved if casual leave was taken and disability adjusted life years could have been calculated and presented. However, the primary objective of the paper was not so much the economic burden as much as assessing the demographics of the bite victims and management practices. No patient with a Category III bite was admitted. The costs presented primarily pertained to travel expenditure and the cost of the human rabies immunoglobulin (HRIG) while the actual number of working or school days lost were presented as numerical data. We agree that it is an underestimate. However, it does give some idea about out of pocket expenditure that majority of patients face in this country. Calculations of economic burden with their inherent complexities would need to form the primary objective of an altogether new research question.
References
- Demographics of animal bite victims & management practices in a tertiary care institute in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Indian J Med Res. 2014;139:459-62.
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