COVAX – Time to reconsider the strategy and its target

David C Bell, Garrett Wallace Brown, Wellington Oyibo, Samiratou Ouédraogo, Blagovesta Tacheva, Elena Barbaud, Andreas Kalk, Valéry Ridde and Elisabeth Paul

ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: COVAX, the international initiative supporting COVID-19 vaccination campaigns globally, is budgeted to be the costliest public health initiative in low- and middle-income countries, with over 16 billion US dollars already committed. While some claim that the target of vaccinating 70% of people worldwide is justified on equity grounds, we argue that this rationale is wrong for two reasons. First, mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns do not meet standard public health requirements for clear expected benefit, based on costs, disease burden and intervention effectiveness. Second, it constitutes a diversion of resources from more cost-effective and impactful public health programmes, thus reducing health equity. We conclude that the COVAX initiative warrants urgent review.

Date: 2023-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in: Health Policy OPEN (2023),p.100096

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/357576/3/2023-COVAX.pdf Œuvre complète ou partie de l'œuvre (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/357576

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... lb.ac.be:2013/357576

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().