Providing information to assist decisions on the inclusion of new vaccines in the childhood immunisation programme in Hong Kong

Abstract

There are several vaccines now approved for administration to young children but not yet incorporated into the Hong Kong Childhood Immunisation Programme (CIP). Some of these vaccines are reported as being cost-effective and several are routinely given to infants in other countries. The Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Diseases (Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health) was therefore interested to know the likely cost-effectiveness of some of these vaccines in Hong Kong in order to consider adopting them into the CIP. When translating economic findings from one country to another, it can often be assumed that clinical effects will be similar. However costs, patterns of care and behaviour and baseline prevalence of diseases usually differ. Therefore, it was necessary to model the cost-effectiveness of each vaccine in which the Committee was interested to reflect the local situation. This paper will report on some of the principal challenges and issues in providing useful information to the policy-makers on the cost-effectiveness of these vaccines.