The intangible benefits of vaccination – what is the true economic value of vaccination?

The poor perception of the benefits of vaccines, and their subsequent underuse, can result in substantial economic, societal, and political burden. Adequate support and communication from health authorities and governments is essential to promote the benefits of vaccination and reduce the risk of infectious diseases outbreaks. Cost-containment policies in the vaccine procurement processes could also be a threat to the long-term sustainability of the vaccine industry and manufacturing sites in Europe. Biologicals, such as vaccines, are highly technical and complex products to manufacture and only a few industries are engaged in this activity. Developing incentives to encourage vaccine manufacturers and identifying means of taking into consideration the specificities of vaccines in economic evaluations could allow the full value of vaccination to be appreciated. In conclusion, governments, international agencies, and other stakeholders have an important role to play to help society regain confidence in vaccination and ensure that the benefits of vaccination programmes are fully recognised and valued.

Section: Suboptimal Economic Evaluationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

From population to public institutions: what needs to be changed to benefit from the full value of vaccination

Szucs

Quilici

Panfilo

2015

“…Seventh, vaccine prevention of infectious diseases has intangible benefits that cannot easily be measured in monetary terms, such as avoiding pain, discomfort, unpleasantness or disruption due to the disease or cumbersome interventions [40]. For example, HPV vaccination requires a simple injection that could avoid the need for future investigation and treatment of pre-cancerous abnormalities and/or cervical cancer, and may be able to reduce the frequency of Pap smears for screening.…”

Section: Failures In Using Icua For Vaccinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are essentially societal gains and will be maximised by greater vaccine coverage, although they may also be part of individual benefit. To facilitate their assessment it has recently been proposed to categorise them into three groups [40]: outcome-related productivity gains such as improved cognition and physical strength after full vaccination during childhood;behaviour-related productivity gains such as improved fertility after the introduction of HPV vaccination;community externalities such as prevention of antibiotic resistance with the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines [40]. …”

Section: Failures In Using Icua For Vaccinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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2. How is the economic assessment of vaccines performed today?

Standaert

Rappuoli²

2017

This paper describes how the economic assessment of vaccines is performed today. It discusses why it may be incomplete and explores potential approaches to adjust the analysis to be more comprehensive. Besides helping protect against serious disease, vaccines also help avoid mild disease episodes that may not receive medical attention but which have important societal consequences. They also benefit unvaccinated individuals by reducing disease transmission. Wider societal benefits may extend beyond a decrease in disease incidence, as lower transmission rates reduce the risk of epidemics, which in turn reduces the pressure on healthcare providers, and may improve the quality of care for patients with unrelated diseases. Vaccines also lower the use of antibiotics leading to less pressure on anti-microbial resistance. Conventional ICUA focuses on individual health benefits, like increased survival. Therefore, this approach may not adequately capture the wider vaccination benefits. We discuss differences between treatment and vaccine prevention in the economic assessment, and how ICUA has been adapted to cope with the inconsistencies. Although such adaptations may fulfil the demand of one specific stakeholder, they may not meet the needs of other stakeholders who operate at the societal level, such as ministries other than healthcare, employers, caregivers, and insurers.

“…New treatments are given to patients suffering from diseases when under direct medical attention. In contrast, disease prevention through vaccination may happen in very different environments without unprompted medical attention [4,5]. Disease prevention may have farreaching externalities beyond healthcare, which may completely remodel the impact of disease on healthcare and society, potentially spanning different domains of variable relevance to various stakeholders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to assess for the full economic value of vaccines? From past to present, drawing lessons for the future

Standaert

Sauboin

DeAntonio³

et al. 2020

Background:Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is the economic analysis method most commonly applied today in the context of replacing one treatment with a new one in a developed healthcare system to improve efficiency. CEA is often requested by local healthcare decisionmakers to grant reimbursement.New preventative interventions, such as new vaccines, may however have much wider benefits inside and outside healthcare, when compared with treatment. These additional benefits include externalities on indirect clinical impact, reallocation of specific healthcare resources, improved quality of care, better productivity, better disease control, better fiscal revenues, and others. But these effects are sometimes difficult to integrate into a meaningful CEA result. They may appear as specific benefits for specific stakeholders, other than the stakeholders in healthcare.Objective: Based on a historical view about the application of economic assessments for vaccines our objective has been to make the inventory of who was/is interested in knowing the economic value of vaccines, in what those different stakeholders are likely to see the benefit from their perspective and how were/are we able to measure those benefits and to report them well. Results: The historical view disclosed a limited interest in the economic assessment of vaccines at start, more than 50 years ago, that was comparable to the assessment of looking for more efficiency in new industries through optimization exercises. Today, we are exposed to a very rich panoply of different stakeholders (n= 16). They have their specific interest in many different facets of the vaccine benefit of which some are well known in the conventional economic analysis (n=9), but most outcomes are hidden and not enough evaluated and reported (n=26). Meanwhile we discovered that many different methods of evaluation have been explored to facilitate the measurement and reporting of the benefits (n=18). Conclusion: Our recommendation for future economic evaluations of new vaccines is therefore to find the right combination among the three entities of stakeholder type selection, outcome measure of interest for each stakeholder, and the right method to apply. We present at the end examples that illustrate how successful this approach can be.