Cost effective?

[ema-adama]

This is an area of vaccines that I know very very little about.

How is this factored? Is the money that is used to develop the vaccine considered part of the cost of the vaccine?

When is a life considered saved by a vaccine? ie You stopped a starving children from dying of measles, but they die from another opportunistic disease. Is that considered a life saved or a vaccine wasted? (this sounds very heartless, but I am curious as to just how the cost of the vaccine versus the cost of the disease are worked out).

Has overall child health care come down with increases in allergies, diabetes, neurological problems etc?

Just what are the figures of money that are being invested in vaccine development as well as sales of vaccines? Is this comparable to $ saved from treating the VPD's?

Is there a neat tidy table anywhere?

[shuttlt]

Originally Posted by ema-adama

This is an area of vaccines that I know very very little about.

How is this factored? Is the money that is used to develop the vaccine considered part of the cost of the vaccine?

When is a life considered saved by a vaccine? ie You stopped a starving children from dying of measles, but they die from another opportunistic disease. Is that considered a life saved or a vaccine wasted? (this sounds very heartless, but I am curious as to just how the cost of the vaccine versus the cost of the disease are worked out).

Has overall child health care come down with increases in allergies, diabetes, neurological problems etc?

Just what are the figures of money that are being invested in vaccine development as well as sales of vaccines? Is this comparable to $ saved from treating the VPD's?

Is there a neat tidy table anywhere?

I would guess that such a calculation has been done, at least in the UK. NICE are supposed to approve all treatments based on cost effectiveness. Even if it was a very rough estimate done by a panel of experts this should have been considered. Whether it's publicly available though.... worth a dig though.

[shuttlt]

This http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/pdf...tingReport.pdf may be a place to start looking. It seems to be a report on the cost to the NHS of implementing their TB vaccine guidence.

I'm kind of swamped right now, but I'll look into this in more detail later.

[ema-adama]

Thanks for the link, alhtough TB is not really that relevant. But I will keep looking.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...B9hjJmFF47ppLQ
a PDF file from the WHO

It would seem that in 1980 there was a $2 billion industry and in 2000 a $5.4 billion dollar industry, with a 12%projected growth in the vaccine market. The pharmeceutical market in 2000 was generated $337.3 billion. (making vaccines not that large a sector)

I wonder what the vaccine market is worth today.

There is also mention made on page 2 about vaccine adverse events and this making an impact on revenue from vaccines in 1980. : we can't have that now, can we . Good thing the manufacturers aren't responsible for their prodect any more. Good way to cut costs :Puke

P 8 discusses just how prohibitive the cost is for safety trials for the vaccine, mentioning the rotatech vaccine and how the release of the vaccine onto the market was the only way to test it's safety as it just would have been too expensive to study the number of children needed to draw accurate conclusions about safety. : Well, that is what I understood from what was written anyway.

I am just curious if all the money put into Research and Development of vaccines is factored into the overall cost.

[mamakay]

I am just curious if all the money put into Research and Development of vaccines is factored into the overall cost.

No, it's not.
They're usually doing a pretty basic estimate of "estimated cases per country, estimated hospitalizations per year, price of hospitalizations" vs the price of the series of the vaccine given to all the kids.

Here's an example:

http://www.path.org/vaccineresources...ucker_JAMA.pdf

This is one of those things were the people designing the study can come to whatever conclusion they want, IMO. It's all about picking the endpoints to evaluate you know will tip the scales in your favor.
The UK hasn't introduced mass chickenpox vaccination because they evaluated the cost of an increase in shingles, and assumed more than one dose would be necessary. For now, they think the vax is not at all cost effective.
The US's CDC found the same vax to be very cost effective, because they left those endpoints out of their evaluation.

Looking at cost-effectiveness evaluations and comparing what different countries decide is actually a pretty good way to familiarize oneself with the way various biases can pop up in scientific research, in general.

[shuttlt]

Originally Posted by ema-adama

Thanks for the link, alhtough TB is not really that relevant. But I will keep looking.

Yeah! I agree. Best I could do in the time. I really meant it to show the type of thing that was available and should be available for the stuff we're interested in.

Originally Posted by ema-adama

I am just curious if all the money put into Research and Development of vaccines is factored into the overall cost.

I would guess that that, admin, marketing, miscellaneous legal costs , and enough profit to keep the shareholders happy would be included in the cost of the vaccine from the manufacturer.

[mamakay]

You guys need to learn how to use google scholar.
Try searches like this:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=...r=&btnG=Search

You can play around with the search words and find anything that's ever been studied in google scholar. Looking through the "all 4 versions" (or all 6 versions, whatever) on the right under the articles will often provide a fulltext for free.

[shuttlt]

Originally Posted by mamakay

You guys need to learn how to use google scholar.
Try searches like this:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=...r=&btnG=Search

You can play around with the search words and find anything that's ever been studied in google scholar. Looking through the "all 4 versions" (or all 6 versions, whatever) on the right under the articles will often provide a fulltext for free.

Ooooooooooooooh! : Give yourself 10 points mamakay.

[Scattershoot]

I would say vaccines are extremely cost-effective. The companies that make the vaccines make other pharmaceuticals and the "health" clinics providing them see patients for all kinds of reasons.

Since massive vaccination began and the vaccination schedule has increased, the amount of money spent by consumers on health care has gone up dramatically. Per capita spending on health care in the U.S. went up 50% in the 90's. The healthcare industry is the single largest industry in the country. Children's hospitals are popping up all over the country.

Of course correlation does not mean causation, but it does make one wonder.

[ema-adama]

Originally Posted by mamakay

No, it's not.
They're usually doing a pretty basic estimate of "estimated cases per country, estimated hospitalizations per year, price of hospitalizations" vs the price of the series of the vaccine given to all the kids.

That is what I had been thinking.
I am curious as to just how much has been spent on vaccines, factoring in R&D, sale of vaccines and treating adverse events. Is there is a total figure?