Comment on “Forecasting dengue vaccine demand in disease endemic and non-endemic countries” Amarasinghe et al; Human Vaccines 2010; 6:9, 745-753.

Abstract

Recent forecasts of dengue travel vaccine demand, while worthy, might be improved by modelling future travel flows, and by accounting for incremental reductions in demand at the different points in the sequence of events leading to travel vaccine purchase. In particular, we suggest that an alternative method of projecting dengue travel vaccine uptake would account for (1) future flows of travellers from all non-endemic source to all endemic destination countries, based on data that are comparable between countries, and corrected for double-counting and other sources of error; (2) the proportion of such travellers that seek premedical travel advice within a timescale compatible with the probable dengue vaccine schedule; (3) the proportion of these travellers that will present with a combination of risk factors (above and beyond destination country) sufficient to prompt a physician to prescribe a dengue vaccine; and (4) the proportion of these travellers that actually purchase a vaccine when advised to do so.