Economic burden of measles outbreaks: a cost-of-illness study in a middle-income country in the post-elimination era

Description

Patrícia Coelho de Soárez and six co-authors tally what measles outbreaks cost Brazil's public health system after the country had eliminated the disease, in this 2024 study. Over thirty-six thousand cases were confirmed between 2018 and 2020. The team costed hospital and clinic care, laboratory testing, and the vaccines and lab work spent on outbreak control.

The outbreaks cost about one hundred and eight million dollars in total. Each case ran between roughly twenty-six hundred and thirty-seven hundred dollars, averaging near three thousand. Sensitivity checks bracketed the uncertainty without changing the story. The authors argue that the bill itself is a policy argument: prevention and rapid control are cheap next to resurgence. Budgets should be planned so the next importation never becomes an outbreak.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC11648058