The cost of an Ebola case

Abstract

As the most recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa continues to grow since its initial recognition as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, an unanswered question is what is the cost of a case of Ebola? Understanding this cost will help decision makers better understand the impact of each case of EVD, benchmark this against that of other diseases, prioritize which cases may require response, and begin to estimate the cost of Ebola outbreaks. To date, the scientific literature has not characterized this cost per case. Therefore, we developed a mathematical model to estimate the cost of an EVD case from the provider and societal perspectives in the three most affected countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Our model estimates the total societal cost of an EVD case with full recovery ranges from $480 to $912, while that of an EVD case not surviving ranges from $5929 to $18 929, varying by age and country. Therefore, as of 10 December 2014, the estimated total societal costs of all reported EVD cases in these three countries range from $82 to potentially over $356 million.

A balance act: minimizing economic loss while controlling novel coronavirus pneumonia

“…55 Such assessment methods could calculate the cost per case and the number of infections avoided under prevention and control. Bartsch et al 56 used the Monte Carlo simulation model to estimate the cost of Ebola cases in the three most affected countries from a provider and social perspective. The four specific cases include: 1) survivors receiving supportive care; 2) patients who died after receiving supportive care; 3) survivors receiving extensive supportive care; and 4) patients who died after receiving extensive supportive care.…”

Emerging infectious diseases: A proactive approach

“…Compelling evidence of economic effects of infectious diseases abounds. Examples range from the economic consequences of the aforementioned historical epidemics to fallout from modern epidemics of malaria (5,6), SARS (7), Ebola (8,9), and dengue (10). The World Bank estimates the anticipated gross domestic product (GDP) cost of a moderately severe global flu pandemic at about 5% of world income (roughly $3.5 trillion-a sum greater than Germany's GDP) (11,12).…”

Sexual transmission and the probability of an end of the Ebola virus disease epidemic

“…The cost required to save one life year was 30 0 0 US Dollars using the threshold 5%, indicating that the use of our modeling method would be regarded as cost effective, according to the standard in industrialized countries. However, compared with a threshold of ICER at 50,0 0 0 US Dollars in the United States ( Woods et al, 2016 ), the acceptable total societal cost in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone based on GDP per capita would range from 5929 to 18,929 US Dollars ( Bartsch et al, 2015 ). That is, our result remains cost effective according to their countries' criteria of cost effectiveness.…”