Los
Angeles, Jan 22
Polio vaccination in the US has resulted in a net savings of more
than $180 billion, according to a new study. The study, conducted by
researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), was the
first of its kind to retrospectively demonstrate the enormous
benefits of polio vaccination. The study said polio vaccination
could achieve huge economic savings even without including the
large, intangible benefits associated with avoided fear and
suffering.
The history of polio vaccination in the US spans over 50 years and
includes different phases of the disease, multiple vaccines and a
sustained significant commitment of financial resources.
The lead author of the study, Kimberly Thompson, emphasized that
this study "should help people understand and better appreciate the
huge economic savings that can come from investments in public
health interventions".
The researchers found that the US invested over $35 billion between
1955 and 2005 and will continue to invest billions into the future
to pay for polio vaccination.
They estimated that these historical and future investments
translate into over 1.7 billion vaccinations that prevent
approximately 1.1 million cases of paralytic polio and over 160,000
deaths, thus saving Americans hundreds of billions of dollars in
treatment costs.
"This study documents the extraordinary power of vaccines not only
as highly effective tools to prevent disease, disability, and death,
but to provide enormous economic savings to society," said Stephen
Cochi, an expert on polio.
Although the last case of paralytic polio from wild poliovirus
occurred in the US in 1979, American children continue to receive
polio vaccinations.
"As we stand on the brink of eliminating wild polioviruses around
the world, these results provide a glimpse of the massive economic
benefits of global polio eradication," said Bruce Aylward, director
of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in the World Health
Organization.
To date, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has succeeded in
reducing the annual cases of paralytic polio from an estimated
350,000 cases in 1988 to less than 2,000 cases in 2006.
The only remaining areas of the world that have not yet disrupted
transmission include Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.
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