I

would like to give a kind of a bit different perspective on immunization and vaccines, mostly from pharmaceutical and medical point of view, but also from economical side of this same issue. Vaccines and immunization are one of the most important medical inventions and there are a lot of medical and human benefits from vaccination all around the world for years now and even as we speak.

But at the same time- what is actually vaccination from economic perspective and what is its impact? What are the costs? What are the potential financial benefits of the vaccination and immunisation as a whole?

 

 

 

 

Firstly, there are a lot of different methods on how to calculate these different economical analysis which are more or less similar, but again different in a way. And they usually tackle only part of the issue. They usually analyze, either one vaccine, one type of vaccine in one country, or only one geographical area. So in short, there is no one underlying number that can tell you how good and how effective all of the vaccines are.

But basically all of those analyses that are conducted practically always show that vaccines, vaccination, immunization are most cost effective medical intervention or medical inventions and also provide a lot of economic benefits for the whole societies, for the whole countries.

On a societal level having successful vaccination programs can lead to many economic benefits for a particular country, ranging from reducing health care costs primarily by avoiding by avoiding hospitalizations, reducing health care expenses in other areas, increasing productivity of healthy people that didn’t need to stay home and increasing the active and productive life of the population. All of these economic impacts that vaccination has, have very positive impact on the overall economy and have a great societal benefits for countries that successfully implement different Immunization programs.

As we all know, vaccinations save and prolong lives and make people more healthy, which means that those people in general, especially statistically on a whole country level, use healthcare system less, which means that healthcare systems spends less, which also leads to family members of potential patients having less burden on themselves. They are less sick. Sick-leave benefits are paid out from the public budget, which then saves money, which also means that healthy people are more productive, they work more, they work better. That leads to increased spending and more taxes collected by the public budget, and the overall economy is rising faster, specially in tourism, which for countries like Croatia is extremely important. Additional benefits of the immunization programs is that will travel more which impacts on more incomes and tax collection for the countries with a lot of tourists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the same time, the question remains – why different countries have different vaccination rates? Why are there still many countries, including those in Central and Eastern Europe, that are not that successful, especially in certain vaccination programs? There are many underlying issues for that. And all of all of these potential and actual reasons need to be tackled.

They won’t just go away by themselves, but I would like to comment on this one specifically- budgetary constraints and challenges. This basically means that there’s a view that countries that have less money (that are „poorer“) will also have less money for healthcare and, in the end, will invest or pay less for vaccination programs.

But at the same time, the wealthier nations, like, for example, in northern Europe will be able to have better and more immunization programs because they are wealthy from the start. In my opinion, that raises the question- what came first? Are those countries having more spending on immunization programs because they are wealthy or are they wealthy because they have invested their public money in a smart way, including into immunization, which is very cost efficient and which in the end helps their own population being more healthy, more productive, and even producing more overall overall positive economic impact on that country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in that way, immunization is one of those investments in health of the nation that can in the long term (and sometimes even in short term), provide great benefits for the whole country and for for the whole society, and even for public budget. There are many strategies. Countries that have problems with immunization rates, with people accepting immunization, could actually really prepare the economic impact analysis and then share it with the public, to show to their citizens that it’s that immunization, besides being very human and medical intervention with many human and medical advancements and benefits, it can also be a large benefit for the whole country in the economic way. At the same time country should also demonstrate to its citizens, that saved money (or additional money saved because of efficient and effective immunization programs in place) will be spent on something beneficial for the citizens overall. If it’s able to do that in a transparent way and really uses additional money for other health care programs, then it will probably also efficiently tackle all or some of issues that country might have regarding the problem of poor acceptance of vaccination programs in their area, particularly with the problem regarding the trust of citizens into the way of spending public money.

 

 

 

 

 

DAVOR KATAVIĆ

CEO & Founder of DESIDERIUS CONSULTING

Manager, expert and consultant in Finance, Accounting and Controlling, in both private and public sector. Currently focused on healthcare consulting, increasing market presence and profitabilty for pharmaceutical and medical devices industry, as well as improving financial sustainability and efficiency of healthcare systems and individual healthcare providers. Specialized in healthcare systems of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia).