UNC Researchers: Vaccinations in World’s Poorest Countries Will Prevent 20 Million Deaths and Save $350 Billion by 2020

Researchers from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy released a study earlier this month showing that vaccination efforts in the world’s poorest countries since 2001 will have prevented 20 million deaths and saved $350 billion in health care by the year 2020.

The vaccination efforts researched were made by Gavi, a global vaccine alliance that provides vaccinations to the world’s 73 poorest counties and has contributed to the immunization of 580 million children.

Leader of the study and Associate Professor at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Sachiko Ozawa, says the main message of the research is that there are real benefits to vaccinations.

“We look at what the impact of vaccination is in preventing about 500 million cases of illness, 70 million hospitalizations, 9 million cases of long term disability and 20 million deaths,” said Ozawa.

To measure money that could have been saved, researchers looked at both short-term and long-term costs such as averted treatment, transportation costs, productivity loss of caregivers and productivity loss due to disability and death.

Researchers also used the value-of-life method to determine that the economic and social value of saving those lives and preventing disabilities is $820 billion.

Each country included in the study will have avoided an average of $5 million in treatment costs because of receiving immunization from Gavi.

Gavi’s immunization includes 10 vaccines.

“The estimates are around vaccinations against hepatitis B, human papillomavirus- that’s HPV, Japanese encephalitis, measles, rotavirus, rubella, yellow fever and then three strains of bacteria that cause pneumonia and meningitis, which are haemophilus influenzae type b and streptococcus pneumoniae and meningococcal type A,” said Ozawa.

Ozawa says the study proves that vaccines are working in these countries and that people should stay vigilant in supporting global immunization.