Economics of vaccines revisited

Abstract

Performing a total health economic analysis of a vaccine newly introduced into the market today is a challenge when using the conventional cost-effectiveness analysis we normally apply on pharmaceutical products. There are many reasons for that, such as: the uncertainty in the total benefit (direct and indirect) to be measured in a population when using a cohort model;1 appropriate rules about discounting the long-term impact of vaccines are absent jeopardizing therefore their value at the initial investment;2 the presence of opposite contexts when introducing the vaccine in developed vs. the developing world with high benefits, low initial health care investment for the latter vs. marginal benefit and high cost for the former; with a corresponding paradox for the vaccine becoming very cost-effective in low income countries but rather medium in middle low to high middle income countries;3 and the type of trial assessment for the newer vaccines is now often performed with immunogenicity reaction instead of clinical endpoints which still leaves questions on their real impact and their head-to-head comparison.4 © 2013 Landes Bioscience.