a Steinbeis University; Berlin, Germany.
Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2014;10(8):2290-4. doi: 10.4161/hv.29090.
Economic evaluation of vaccination programs can be challenging and does not always fully capture the benefits provided. Reasons for this include the difficulties incurred in accurately capturing the health and economic impact of infectious diseases and how different diseases may interact with each other. Rotavirus infection, for example, peaks at a similar time than other infectious diseases, such as RSV and influenza, which can cause hospital overcrowding and disruption, and may pose a risk to more vulnerable children due to limited availability of isolation facilities. Another challenge, specific to evaluating childhood vaccination, is that QoL cannot be accurately measured in children due to a lack of validated instruments. Childhood diseases also incur a care giver burden, due to the need for parents to take time off work, and this is important to consider. Finally, for diseases such as RVGE, cost-effectiveness analyses in which longer time horizons are considered may not reflect the short-term benefits of vaccination. Further quantification of the economic impact of childhood diseases is thus required to fully highlight the true benefits of childhood vaccination that may be realized. Herein we explore the limitations of existing economic evaluations for childhood vaccination, and how economic analyses could be better adapted in future.
疫苗接种项目的经济评估可能具有挑战性，并且并不总能完全捕捉到所提供的益处。造成这种情况的原因包括准确捕捉传染病的健康和经济影响以及不同疾病如何相互作用的困难。例如，轮状病毒感染在与其他传染病（如 RSV 和流感）相似的时间达到高峰，这可能导致医院人满为患和混乱，并可能由于隔离设施有限而对更脆弱的儿童构成风险。另一个挑战，特别是评估儿童疫苗接种，是由于缺乏经过验证的工具，因此无法准确测量儿童的生活质量。由于需要父母请假，儿童疾病还会给照顾者带来负担，这一点很重要。最后，对于轮状病毒肠胃炎等疾病，考虑到更长时间范围的成本效益分析可能无法反映疫苗接种的短期益处。因此，需要进一步量化儿童疾病的经济影响，以充分突出儿童疫苗接种的真正益处。在此，我们探讨了现有儿童疫苗接种经济评估的局限性，以及未来如何更好地调整经济分析。
