PLOS Collection: Economic Efficiency of HIV Services

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide, and the majority of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. This book provides practical guidelines and lessons learned through real-world case studies. It is intended to be informative to NCD program managers, policy officers and decision-makers in low- and middle-income countries, who need to comparatively assess interventions for the prevention and control of NCDs.The authors emphasize the importance of context in NCD control…

This lesson plan from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was curated to teach high school students, grades 9-10, to explore decision-making about the seasonal influenza (flu) vaccination. The lesson looks at financial decisions around vaccinations, based on a case study exploring the experiences of 282 children from cities around the United States. It looks at a wide range of factors including treatment for children with the flu and the cost of parents…

In the absence of routine cost data collection, estimating the incremental costs of scaling-up novel technologies in low-income and middle-income countries is a methodologically challenging and substantial empirical undertaking. Using the example of costing the scale-up of Xpert Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB)/resistance to riframpicin (RIF) in South Africa, the authors estimate costs, by applying two distinct approaches of bottom-up and top-down costing, together with an assessment of processes and capacity. The unit costs measured using the…