ERRATA

In the SAMJ April 2011 'Izindaba' report on soaring South African medical negligence pay-outs, a picture of a Marsh Owl (p. 218) unfortunately replaced a picture of Dr Graham Howarth, the Medical Protection Society's Head of Medical Services for Africa. This was not intended to be an April Fools' joke. A computer system crash resulted in the pictures inadvertently being switched. The owl, also featured on our cover that month, is described as 'gregarious', with 'long wings that enable it to maintain a slow, buoyant, quartering flight ...', while its young 'often leave the nest hollow and disperse before they are able to fly to reduce the risk of predation on the entire brood'. Despite the metaphorical similarities, we repeat, this was not an intentional April Fools' leg pull! Really!

We regret that two errors occurred on p. 66 of the January 2011 SAMJ, in the 'Guideline for the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - 2011 update'. The words 'stop for' were duplicated in the 7th line of Table VI, and the 6MWD distance of 200 - 600 m should have been centred under the columns for Stage 2 and Stage 3. The online version of this article was corrected on 14 April 2011. We apologise for these errors.