Financing dengue vaccine introduction in the Americas: challenges and opportunities

ABSTRACT

Dengue has escalated in the region of the Americas unabated despite major investments in integrated vector control and prevention strategies. An effective and affordable dengue vaccine can play a critical role in reducing the human and economic costs of the disease by preventing millions around the world from getting sick. However, there are considerable challenges on the path towards vaccine introduction. These include lack of sufficient financing tools, absence of capacity within national level decision-making bodies, and demands that new vaccines place on stressed health systems. Various financing models can be used to overcome these challenges including setting up procurement mechanisms, integrating regional and domestic taxes, and setting up low interest multilateral loans. In this paper we review these challenges and opportunities of financing dengue vaccine introduction in the Americas.

KEYWORDS:

• Challenges
• financing
• dengue
• vaccine introduction
• Americas

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Ms. Vibhuti Hate for her initial literature review and early writing contributions. We are also grateful for the role of experts from various bilateral organizations, public health agencies, Ministries of Health, and program managers who attended a dengue financing workshop, which served as the groundwork for this paper. Full independence of the content remains with the authors, along with responsibility for any errors.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This paper was made possible with a sponsored grant from the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), a core partner of the Dengue Vaccine Initiative (DVI). IVI received this grant from Sanofi Pasteur. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.