Preventive Vaccine Campaigns More Cost-Effective Than Reactive Ones.(World Health Organization vaccination policy questioned)

2001 AUG 15 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

by N.R. Saltmarsh, staff medical writer - Areas in sub-Saharan Africa that lack adequate disease surveillance systems could benefit from preventive mass immunization against meningococcal meningitis, researchers in France have found.

They challenged the current World Health Organization policy of vaccinating the population with meningococcal A plus C polysaccharide vaccine only after epidemic thresholds are passed, pointing out that in economic terms alone preventive vaccination makes more sense.

"An alternative strategy for areas without effective surveillance systems is mass preventive campaigns before outbreaks occur," explained I.P. du Chatelet and colleagues, Association pour l'Aide Medecine Preventive in Paris.

They devised a model to simulate epidemics and to compare the cost-effectiveness of pre- versus postepidemic vaccination in Matam, Senegal, where an actual preventive campaign was performed during 1997. The model assumed that the occurrence of an epidemic could be predicted within three years and that the vaccination coverage rates for the preventive and standard strategies were >70% and

Using this model, the preventive strategy prevented 59% of the cases compared with 49% for the emergency strategy, for a cost per case prevented of US$59, versus US$133 for the reactive strategy, reported du Chatelet and coworkers. The preventive strategy saved ...