Description
Are current cost-effectiveness “thresholds” for low- and middle- income countries useful? Examples from the world of vaccines Abstract: Whether a health care system should fund a vaccine, like any intervention or program, depends upon the total health it generates and how much it costs. This information is commonly summarized as a cost-effectiveness ratio, which requires comparison with an appropriate ‘threshold’. This presentation touches on the theoretical foundations of commonly used ‘thresholds’ for decision making in LMICs, which typically reflect a view of what spending on health ought to be, rather than the value of what is likely to be displaced by funding a new intervention or program when resources are constrained. This underscores the need to use estimates that reflect the marginal productivity of spending on health in order to quantify health opportunity costs. Being able to estimate the health opportunity cost of funding a vaccine alongside the health opportunity costs of competing demands on health care system resources enables prioritisation of resources between competing demands on the basis of population health gains. It also enables the quantification of the maximum that could be spent over and above the cost of a vaccine (e.g., on implementation) before it was no longer cost effective. This is all explored using an example from the world of vaccines.| Period | 5 Dec 2016 → 7 Dec 2016 |
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| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Annecy, FranceShow on map |