Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
This weekend I received my second COVID-19 vaccine. While I certainly feel lucky to live in a country with ample vaccine supply, other countries are not so lucky. Let’s take a look at the numbers from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. These numbers are updated through May 2, 2021. First, you’ll see that…
It’s not great. From Nelson et al. (2009): Among those who received a first dose of varicella (n = 16 075), hepatitis A (n = 594 917), and hepatitis B (n = 590 445) vaccine, relatively few completed the series (55%–65% for hepatitis B vaccine and 40%–50% for hepatitis A and varicella vaccines in most…
That is according to a Health Affairspaper by So Yoon Sim et al. (2020). We estimated economic benefits using cost-of-illness and value-of-a-statistical-life approaches and combined this estimation with immunization program costs to derive the return on investment from immunization programs against ten pathogens for ninety-four low- and middle-income countries for the period 2011–30. Using the…
Some positive news as reported in The Economist: On August 21st Nigeria marked three years since its last documented case of wild polio. That means the country is set to be declared polio-free by the World Health Organisation-backed Global Polio Eradication Initiative. If that happens, probably next year, all of Africa will be officially free…
No, this story is not about parents who don’t vaccinate their kids. It’s about parents who have vaccinated their kids (or plan to), but want to keep their children away from unvaccinated children. From the LA Times: A Bay Area mother formed a Facebook page where parents could arrange play dates for their children with…
According to the CDC, this year is on track to be the worst for measles in more than a decade. CNN reports that: There were 159 cases of measles in the United States from January 1 through August 24, according to the CDC. If that trend continues, there will be more cases in 2013 than…
In 2005, the market for pediatric vaccines was about $5 billion and the market for adult vaccines was about $4 billion. Yet these figures could be small potatoes. The Economist predicts that pediatric vaccine market will reach $20 billion by 2014; the adult vaccine market won’t be far behind. What innovations may be on the…
A paper written by John Fontanesi and myself was recently published in the October 2009 edition of the American Journal of Managed Care. The paper is titled “Delivering Vaccines: A Case Study of the Distribution System of Vaccines for Children.” The abstract of the paper is below: Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of the central- ization…
Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs have become very popular among development economists. This programs pay poor families to have their children attend school and/or get vaccinated. Some of the larger programs include Bolsa Família in Brazil and Oportunidades in Mexico. Should economists support CCTs that pay the poor to get vaccinated? This depends on 2 factors: 1)…
This American Life has a very interesting show about the San Diego measles outbreak. Outbreaks decades ago were due to the fact that poor individuals often could not afford to get vaccinated or see a doctor. Now, this is not a problem since vaccines are generally made available for free for those who cannot pay.…