Vaccine News & Update: Study Suggests That Expanding Vaccine Use Could Lead To Great Savings

A new study performed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that vaccinations are not only an excellent investment that prevents illness and saves lives but could have significant economic value.

The study will be published in the journal Health Affairs, in the February issue. This is one of the first studies to examine the potential return on vaccinations investment. By using projected vaccination rates from 2011 to 2020, the research team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health assessed the economic benefits of vaccines in 94 low- and middle-income countries.

The return was $16 for every dollar spent on vaccines when looking only at costs associated with illness, such as productivity losses and treatment costs. Vaccinations save $44 for every dollar spent when taking into account the broader economic impact of illness.

Lead author Sachiko Ozawa, PhD, MHS, an assistant scientist in the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School, declared that vaccines are proved to be an excellent investment but donors and governments must continue their investments in expanding access to vaccines in order to benefit of the potential economic rewards.

According to Science Daily, the research team used two approaches in order to measure the potential investment returns. The "cost-of-illness" approach measures productivity losses, lost caretaker wages, transportation costs and treatment costs.

The "full-income approach" quantifies the value that people place on living healthier and longer lives and estimates the broader social and economic benefits of vaccination. The costs of immunization programs were modeled separately with both approaches in order to include vaccine costs, service delivery and supply chain.

The study assessed 10 infections preventable by vaccines: Streptococcus pneumonia, rubella, Neisseria meningitis serogroup A, human papillomavirus, yellow fever, Haemophilus influenzae type b, Japanese encephalitis, measles, hepatitis B and rotavirus.

The estimated total cost of immunization programs between 2011 and 2020 was $34 billion in the 94 countries studied. An estimated $586 billion could be averted in cost of illness associated with vaccine-preventable illnesses. The total benefit was estimated at around $1.53 trillion dollars by using the full-income approach.

Millions of children in the world would die from preventable diseases without access to vaccines. Billions of dollars are spent to vaccinate more children, but the goal of full coverage has not been met yet.