Economic Value of Dengue Vaccine in Thailand

Abstract

With several candidate dengue vaccines under development, this is an important time to help stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, scientists, clinicians, and manufacturers) better understand the potential economic value (cost-effectiveness) of a dengue vaccine, especially while vaccine characteristics and strategies might be readily altered. We developed a decision analytic Markov simulation model to evaluate the potential health and economic value of administering a dengue vaccine to an individual (≤ 1 year of age) in Thailand from the societal perspective. Sensitivity analyses evaluated the effects of ranging various vaccine (e.g., cost, efficacy, side effect), epidemiological (dengue risk), and disease (treatment-seeking behavior) characteristics. A ≥ 50% efficacious vaccine was highly cost-effective [< 1× per capita gross domestic product (GDP) ($4,289)] up to a total vaccination cost of $60 and cost-effective [< 3× per capita GDP ($12,868)] up to a total vaccination cost of $200. When the total vaccine series was $1.50, many scenarios were cost saving.