TOWARDS COST-EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS OF SEASONAL INFLUENZA TO SUPPORT GLOBAL HEALTH ALLOCATIONS

Abstract

This thesis examined key issues to evaluate modelling approaches to increase the transferability of cost-effectiveness analyses towards LMICs, with views to increase global capacity to allocate health interventions. I used seasonal influenza as a cases study to illustrate the models. The first approach is mechanism model. The main findings show that immunization of school children is likely to be cost-effective in HICs and also cost-effective in middle-income countries. The second approach is phenomenological model. The meta-analyses highlighted the importance of the unit price of the intervention, the perspective of the study and the timing of vaccination on cost-effectiveness ratios (CERs) for seasonal influenza interventions. In conclusion, these two model approaches, to some extent, both provide possibility to increase the transferability of CEAs towards LMICs and also provide some policy implications like seasonal influenza vaccination might be cost-effective in some middle-income countries.