Abstract:
The application of economic evaluation in healthcare, including vaccination programs, has
increased exponentially since the 1980s.There are a number of aspects of economic
evaluation of vaccine programs that present particular challenges to the analyst. These
include the development of the appropriate epidemiological models from which to estimate
the costs and benefits; the accurate prediction of uptake rates; the incorporation of qualify
adjusted survival gains; and the inclusion of intangible but nonetheless important benefits and
costs associated with infectious disease and vaccination. The estimation of marginal
intervention costs presents specific difficulties, especially for multivalent vaccines and valuing
costs and benefits over time is heavily influenced by the choice of discount rate, which is still a
controversial topic. Developments in the next 5 years are likely to address all of these issues
and result in more sophisticated and accurate models of vaccination programs.
