H1N1 vaccine averted nearly 1 million cases: study

[tetano]

Toronto — The Canadian Press Published on Monday, Jul. 19, 2010 9:58AM EDT Last updated on Monday, Jul. 19, 2010 10:14AM EDT

A new study says Ontario's H1N1 vaccination program averted nearly one million cases and as many as 50 deaths.

The study says Ontario could have seen an additional 420 hospitalizations, 28,000 visits to hospital emergency departments and 100,000 visits to doctors' offices if it hadn't offered the flu shot program

The study was done by Beate Sanders, a health economist with the Ontario Agency of Health Protection and Promotion and was published in the journal Vaccine.

Sanders says that while the $180-million vaccination program was expensive, it was cost-effective.

Sanders notes, though, that if the vaccine had arrived any later the program wouldn't have been as cost-effective as it was.

That's because Ontario started vaccinating just before the peak of the second wave of H1N1 infections and a lot of people had already sick at that point.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...illion-cases-study/article1644655/?cmpid=rss1

 

[tetano]

Re: H1N1 vaccine averted nearly 1 million cases: study

H1N1 immunization campaign prevented deaths, hospitalizations: Study

Nearly one million cases of H1N1 and 52 deaths due to human swine flu were prevented in Ontario alone by the controversial mass immunization campaign, according to new Canadian research.

The study is believed to be the first to investigate the cost-effectiveness of the largest immunization program in the country's history.

Overall, the researchers estimated that the H1N1 flu shots prevented 420 hospitalizations, 28,000 visits to hospital emergency departments and 100,000 visits to a doctor's office in Ontario, even though the vaccines were only rolled out in late October ? nine weeks into the fall wave.

"The vaccine was implemented quite late ? at the height of the pandemic ? and it takes about two weeks for the vaccine to take effect. Even then we could save enough patients to make it worthwhile," Beate Sander, a University of Toronto doctoral student and health economist, said.

As of April, 428 H1N1 deaths had been reported in Canada ? 128 of them in Ontario ? and nearly 9,000 hospitalizations.

A total of 1,843 of the hospitalizations occurred in Ontario.

...


http://www.montrealgazette.com/heal...ths+hospitalizations+Study/3295585/story.html

 

[tetano]

Re: H1N1 vaccine averted nearly 1 million cases: study

Vaccine. 2010 Jul 16. [Epub ahead of print]
Is a mass immunization program for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 good value for money? Evidence from the Canadian Experience.

Sander B, Bauch CT, Fisman D, Fowler RA, Kwong JC, Maetzel A, McGeer A, Raboud J, Scales DC, Gojovic MZ, Krahn M.

Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Division of Clinical Decision-Making and Health Care Research, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada; Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment Collaborative, Toronto, Canada.
Abstract

In response to the pandemic H1N1 influenza 2009 outbreak, many jurisdictions undertook mass immunization programs that were among the largest in recent history. The objective of this study was to determine the cost-effectiveness of the mass H1N1 immunization program in Ontario, Canada's most populous province (population 13,000,000). This analysis suggests that a mass immunization program as carried out in Ontario and many other high-income health care systems in response to H1N1 2009 was effective in preventing influenza cases and health care resource use and was also highly cost-effective despite the substantial program cost. Copyright ? 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

PMID: 20643091 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20643091