Vaccines for Adults Pay Off in Both Lives and Money

Vaccines save lives. There’s no doubt about this: childhood vaccination saves four million lives every year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Children worldwide get a long list of vaccines, but what about adults?

A study by the Office of Health Economics (OHE), an independent research organization, took a look at the cost-effectiveness of four commonly given adult vaccines: the influenza vaccine, pneumococcal vaccines that protect against a batch of respiratory infections, the herpes zoster vaccine that protects against shingles, and the RSV vaccine that prevents respiratory syncytial virus.

To get a good idea of the value across different types of economies and cultures, they looked at 10 countries: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, and the United States. On average, the report found, these 4 adult vaccines gave a 19-fold return, meaning that the benefits equaled 19 times the costs of vaccination. On average, it worked out to US$4,637 per person vaccinated.

Some of the savings are direct – people didn’t rack up hospital costs or miss work if they were vaccinated and evaded serious illness. Some savings were indirect. For instance, “receiving the influenza vaccine reduces the risk of having a stroke and subsequent hospitalization in older adults by 16 percent,” the report reads. “Cancer patients vaccinated with the influenza vaccine also had statistically significantly better survival outcomes, including longer progression-free survival rates and overall survival compared to unvaccinated patients.”

One study cited in the report found that Italian adults vaccinated against flu were 13 percent less likely to die of any cause – not just flu, but any cause – over the 2018-2019 winter flu season than unvaccinated adults.

In this episode of One World, One Health, Dr. Lotte Steuten, Deputy CEO of OHE and co-author of the report, chats about how her team came up with their findings.