Vaccines are among the most powerful inventions in human history, and it is not just a medical duty but a moral responsibility to ensure that everyone has unrestricted access to vaccines.
Vaccines are central to healthy societies because they prevent illnesses and effectively curb the spread of communicable diseases. They help create antibodies to resist illnesses like measles, meningitis, polio, yellow fever, etc. Since 1796 when Dr Edward Jenner created the world’s first successful vaccine against cowpox, vaccines have continued to save lives, estimated annually by the World Health Organisation at 2.5 million lives, the majority of whom are children.
Indeed, vaccines are among the most powerful inventions in human history, and it is not just a medical duty but a moral responsibility to ensure that everyone has unrestricted access to vaccines.
Keeping up with the call to ensure unrestricted access to vaccines may seem difficult in current contexts where it can be financially demanding to develop and/or procure vaccines, hence inaccessible by low-resource regions of the world and deprived populations. To address this challenge, efforts must be channelled toward procuring vaccines with the most impact on addressing disease burden and for the most effective cost.
To achieve the foregoing, a multi-country project on “vaccine economics” has been flagged in Nigeria, Kenya, and Zambia to promote economic evidence in vaccines administration. The project applies Health Technology Assessment (HTA) to systematically assess and evaluate the overall conditions of vaccines as a product of health technology and the economic, social, and ethical concerns they raise.
Two main outcomes when vaccines are effectively deployed are: (a) improves the quality of the lives of people (Quality-Adjusted Life Years – QALYs), and (b) reduces incidents of disability and premature deaths that cut short the lives of people or reduces the quality of their being alive (Disability-Adjusted Life Years – DALYs).
Achieving these outcomes is contingent on how well the development, procurement, and administration of vaccines are budgeted for and financed. This is why Budget Impact Analysis (BIA) is a significant exercise that must be conducted to ensure optimal representation of vaccines in annual budgets in ways that would not compromise spending on other significant areas of development and wellbeing.
Of priority to our work are vaccines for measles and malaria, and the 5-in-1 meningococcal vaccine that protects against different types of bacteria that cause meningitis. As these vaccines become available, delivering them is of prime importance, which also has cost implications.
In summary, in one of our meetings, Prof Abdul Aguye, Chairman, Nigeria Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NGI-TAG) of the National Primary Health Care Agency (NPHCDA) reminded everyone that Nigeria has a high disease burden, and that prioritizing some of the vaccines based on their cost effectiveness would go a long way to mitigate the effects of the diseases on the population.
