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Departments of ¹Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and ²Pediatrics, Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: aslinur@hacettepe.edu.tr Acute tonsillopharyngitis is a very common upper respiratory tract infection and might cause serious morbidity and even mortality if not handled properly. Although the etiologic agent is mostly viral, group A beta hemolytic streptococcus is the most important bacterial agent, with a frequency of 15-30% in the pediatric age group. In this article, as the social burden for this infection is notable and almost one-third of costs are estimated to be non-medical, we applied a questionnaire to the parents of 100 proven group A tonsillopharyngitis patients to describe the social cost of this infection. Keywords : group A beta hemolytic streptococcus, burden, tonsillopharyngitis, child.