Abstract

Background

Vaccination can reduce the incidence and mortality of an infectious disease and thus increase the years of life and productivity for the entire society. But when determining the vaccination coverage rate, its economic burden is usually not taken into account.

Objective

This article aimed to use a dynamic transmission modeling (DTM), which is based on a susceptible-infectious-recovered model and is a system of differential equations, to find the optimal vaccination coverage rate based on the economic burden of an infectious disease.

Methods

Vaccination for pneumococcal diseases was used as an example to demonstrate the main purpose. 23-Valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines (PPV23) and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV13) have shown their cost-effectiveness in elderly and children, respectively. Scenarios analysis of PPV23 to elderly aged 65+ years and of PCV13 to children aged 0 to 4 years was applied to assess the optimal vaccination coverage rate based on the 5-year economic burden. Model parameters were derived from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database, government data, and published literature. Various vaccination coverage rates, the vaccine efficacy, and all epidemiologic parameters were substituted into DTM, and all differential equations were solved in R Statistical Software.

Results

If the coverage rate of PPV23 for the elderly and of PCV13 for the children both reach 50%, the economic burden due to pneumococcal disease will be acceptable.

Conclusions

This article provided an alternative perspective from the economic burden of diseases to obtain a vaccination coverage rate using the DTM. This will provide valuable information for vaccination policy decision makers.