Influenza vaccination in Australia: a review of the economic evidence for policy recommendations

The National Health and Medical Research Council recommends that persons who are believed to be at a higher risk of the complications and of dying of influenza should receive annual vaccinations against the disease. The Council refers specifically to persons who are over the age of 65 years and to those with chronic medical conditions. Recommendations such as these place demands on scarce health resources and it is important to determine if such policies result in the efficient utilization of resources. Accordingly, this article reviews the evidence on the economic efficiency of different vaccination strategies. Two major conclusions emerge. First, even allowing for variability in vaccine effectiveness due to viral antigenic drift, influenza-vaccination programmes, in general, are more cost-effective than are many other interventions that are undertaken as a routine in Australia. Secondly, vaccinating healthy persons who are 45 years of age to 64 years of age is more cost-effective than is vaccinating persons in some of the high-risk groups. Thus, there is likely to be a case for reconsidering whether healthy persons who are younger than 65 years of age also should be included in the official recommendations.