What does it cost to immunize children up to 18 months of age using the current mix of delivery strategies in rural and urban areas in Tanzania?
ICAN’s member countries – Indonesia, Tanzania, and Vietnam – generated cost evidence to address challenges at the top of their health and immunization financing agendas to ensure program and policy relevance. Each country team included health economist researchers, immunization managers, and planners from Ministries of Health.
Technical facilitators from ThinkWell and JSI helped guide the country teams in interpreting and translating cost evidence to ensure its use in country decision-making processes, fundraising and advocacy efforts, and routine planning and budgeting.
The study found cost per dose was lowest at rural facilities with nomads in their catchment population, followed by urban facilities, and then rural facilities without nomads. Outreach delivery is more than three times as expensive as facility-based delivery, but the magnitude of the difference varies immensely by geography. Vaccine delivery costs represented 16% of the total immunization program cost. Study findings will be used by the Tanzania Ministry of Health (MoHCDGEC) to update national guidelines to support Comprehensive Council Health Plan (CCHP) budgeting for operational activities, and to inform the next five-year National Health Plan and immunization comprehensive multi-year plan (cMYP).
