The greatest cost savings from introducing new vaccines and increasing immunization coverage would occur in countries and regions with high disease burden and large populations.

Key Evidence: The first study of the cost-effectiveness of typhoid conjugate vaccines found that routinely immunizing infants at 9 months of age would actually save costs in 2 settings (Delhi, India and a rural area of Vietnam), due to high incidence or high hospitalization rates, and would be cost-effective in the study’s 3 other sites (in India and Kenya). Adding a one-time catch-up campaign for various older age groups would still save costs in the Delhi and Vietnam, and increase the cost-effectiveness in the others, making it economically justifiable.

From the VoICE Editors: The study incorporated herd effects into its model, looked only at the perspective of healthcare payers and assumed the use of a single dose vaccine at 1 international dollar.

Key Evidence: In a modeled analysis of the economic impact of vaccine use in the world’s 72 poorest countries, for countries included in the analyses from the African region, scaling up coverage of the Rotavirus (RVV) vaccine to 90% was projected to result in more than US$900 million in treatment costs averted.