Resources Repository
-
ArticlePublication 2016Funding Gap for Immunization Across 94 Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This analysis estimates immunization program costs, potentially available financing, and resulting funding gap for 94 …
This analysis estimates immunization program costs, potentially available financing, and resulting funding gap for 94 low- and middle-income countries over the five-year period of 2016–2020. Vaccine financing by country governments, GAVI, and other development sources was forecasted for vaccine, supply chain, and service delivery based on an analysis of comprehensive multi-year plans together with a series of scenarios. The authors found that that delivery of full vaccination programs across the 94 countries would result in a total…
Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Mathematical Models | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Global Governance | Economics/Finance | Sub-Saharan Africa | Middle East & North Africa | Latin America & Caribbean | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2016Health, Financial and Distributional Consequences of Tobacco Excise Tax in Lebanon
This paper considers the financial and health effects, by socio-economic class, of increasing tobacco taxes …
This paper considers the financial and health effects, by socio-economic class, of increasing tobacco taxes in Lebanon, a middle-income country. Extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA) methods are applied to quantify, across quintiles of socio-economic status, the health benefits gained, the additional tax revenues raised, and the net financial consequences for households from a 50% increase in the price of tobacco through excise taxes. The increase in tobacco tax is estimated to result in 65,000 premature deaths…
Health/Medicine | Policy/Regulation | Costing Methods | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Chronic Disease/Risk | Middle East & North Africa -
ArticlePublication 2016Country-Level Cost-Effectiveness Thresholds
This article estimates the cost-effectiveness thresholds (CETs) for health interventions in several low and middle-income …
This article estimates the cost-effectiveness thresholds (CETs) for health interventions in several low and middle-income countries (LMICs), based on opportunity costs. When there are constraints on a health care system’s budget or ability to increase expenditures, additional costs imposed by interventions have an “opportunity cost” in terms of the health foregone because other interventions cannot be provided. The authors argue that cost-effectiveness thresholds should reflect health opportunity cost and aim to calculate these in four…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Sub-Saharan Africa | Middle East & North Africa | Latin America & Caribbean | Europe | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2016Cost-Effectiveness Thresholds: Pros and Cons
This WHO bulletin compares the two main methods for comparing the cost-effectiveness of health interventions. …
This WHO bulletin compares the two main methods for comparing the cost-effectiveness of health interventions. Cost-effectiveness thresholds allow health decision makers to identify cost-effectiveness ratios that represent good or bad value for money. In 2001, the World Health Organization's Commission on Macroeconomics in Health suggested cost-effectiveness thresholds based on multiples of a country's per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). In some contexts, these thresholds have been used as decision rules. However, this approach lacks country specificity…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis -
ArticlePublication 2016Assessing Medical Impoverishment by Cause
This article, published in BMC Medicine, utilizes a cost and epidemiological model to propose an …
This article, published in BMC Medicine, utilizes a cost and epidemiological model to propose an assessment of the burden of medical impoverishment in Ethiopia (i.e., the number of households crossing a poverty line due to out-of-pocket (OOP) direct medical expenses). Among 20 leading causes of mortality, the authors estimate the burden of medical impoverishment to be around 350,000 poverty cases, with the top three causes of medical impoverishment attributed to diarrhea, lower respiratory infections, and…
Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Sub-Saharan Africa -
ArticlePublication 2016Essential Package of Cancer Control: Costs, Affordability, and Feasibility of an Essential Package of Cancer Control Interventions in LMIC Countries
Investments in cancer control-prevention, detection, diagnosis, surgery, palliative care-are needed in low-income and particularly in …
Investments in cancer control-prevention, detection, diagnosis, surgery, palliative care-are needed in low-income and particularly in middle-income countries, where most of the world's cancer deaths occur without treatment or palliation. To help countries expand locally appropriate services, Disease Control Priorities, 3rd edition developed an essential package of potentially cost-effective measures for countries to consider and adapt. Interventions included in the package are: prevention of tobacco-related cancer and virus-related liver and cervical cancers; diagnosis and treatment of…
Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Chronic Disease/Risk | Science/Technology | Global -
ArticlePublication 2016What Determines HIV Prevention Costs at Scale?
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention services for key populations are commonly delivered through NGOs. However, …
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention services for key populations are commonly delivered through NGOs. However, funding for HIV prevention remains scarce, and there are growing calls internationally to improve the efficiency of HIV prevention programmes as a key strategy to reach global HIV targets. To date, there is limited evidence on the determinants of costs of HIV prevention delivered through NGOs, and thus, policymakers have little guidance in how best to design programmes that are…
Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Global Governance | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2016Using Top-Down and Bottom-Up Costing Approaches in LMICs
In the absence of routine cost data collection, estimating the incremental costs of scaling-up novel …
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…
Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Economics/Finance | Global -
ArticlePublication 2016Challenges of Prioritization
Cost-effectiveness analysis has traditionally been applied primarily to very specific interventions, such as drugs and …
Cost-effectiveness analysis has traditionally been applied primarily to very specific interventions, such as drugs and diagnostics; in addition, the evidence base drawn on for evaluating such interventions is relatively good, given the medical research industry surrounding their testing. However, with increasing success in controlling infectious diseases, many of the health challenges facing countries concern broad threats to health with multiple causes, such as obesity, where the relationship between policy action and health benefit is not…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Health/Medicine | Health Systems | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Chronic Disease/Risk | Mental Health | Economics/Finance | Global