Molyneux E, Forsyth H, Tembo M, et al. The effect of HIV infection on paediatric bacterial meningitis in Blantyre, Malawi (Arch Dis Child 2003;88:1112–18). The authors would like to apologise for an error in the results section of the abstract of this paper. The sentence “the number of survivors in each group was similar” should have been omitted prior to publication.