Hattip Florida1
Astract
Objectives To estimate the potential economic impact of pandemicinfluenza, associated behavioural responses, school closures,and vaccination on the United Kingdom.
Design A computable general equilibrium model of the UK economywas specified for various combinations of mortality and morbidityfrom pandemic influenza, vaccine efficacy, school closures,and prophylactic absenteeism using published data.
Setting The 2004 UK economy (the most up to date available withsuitable economic data).
Main outcome measures The economic impact of various scenarioswith different pandemic severity, vaccination, school closure,and prophylactic absenteeism specified in terms of gross domesticproduct, output from different economic sectors, and equivalentvariation.
Results The costs related to illness alone ranged between 0.5%and 1.0% of gross domestic product (£8.4bn to £16.8bn)for low fatality scenarios, 3.3% and 4.3% (£55.5bn to£72.3bn) for high fatality scenarios, and larger stillfor an extreme pandemic. School closure increases the economicimpact, particularly for mild pandemics. If widespread behaviouralchange takes place and there is large scale prophylactic absencefrom work, the economic impact would be notably increased withfew health benefits. Vaccination with a pre-pandemic vaccinecould save 0.13% to 2.3% of gross domestic product (£2.2bnto £38.6bn); a single dose of a matched vaccine couldsave 0.3% to 4.3% (£5.0bn to £72.3bn); and two dosesof a matched vaccine could limit the overall economic impactto about 1% of gross domestic product for all disease scenarios.
Conclusion Balancing school closure against “business as usual”and obtaining sufficient stocks of effective vaccine are moreimportant factors in determining the economic impact of an influenzapandemic than is the disease itself. Prophylactic absence fromwork in response to fear of infection can add considerably tothe economic impact.
Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment