A new study in Expert Review of Vaccines has found that prioritizing 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) in immunization programs in Qinghai and Hainan provinces in China could effectively reduce disease burden, improve population health, and promote health equity. Researchers constructed a decision tree Markov model to simulate health outcomes and lifetime costs among children under different PCV13 vaccination strategies compared to current practices, from societal and healthcare perspectives. Including three-dose PCV13 in provincial programs at National Immunization Program coverage (98.91%) could avert 7100 episodes and 118 deaths in Qinghai, and 6200 episodes and 66 deaths in Hainan. It was found to be cost-effective at the $68.2 per dose in private market and cost-saving at UNICEF’s recommended $25/dose for both provinces. Increasing coverage to 50% or 75% was also cost-effective.
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