Related Experiment Videos
Are vaccination sites in Bangladesh scale efficient?
Vivian Valdmanis1, Damian Walker, Julia Fox-Rushby
1Health Economics and Financing Program, Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. vivian.valdmanis@lshtm.ac.uk
Summary
Most vaccination sites operate with increasing returns to scale, challenging cost-effectiveness assumptions. This study analyzed the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in Dhaka City.
Area of Science:
- Health economics
- Operations research
- Public health
Background:
- Vaccination programs are crucial for public health.
- Understanding the scale economies of vaccination sites is vital for efficient resource allocation.
- Previous analyses often assume constant returns to scale.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if vaccination sites exhibit constant returns to scale.
- To quantify the degree of returns to scale at these sites.
Main Methods:
- Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was employed.
- DEA compared facilities based on input costs and multiple outputs.
- The study focused on the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in Dhaka City, Bangladesh, during 1999.
Main Results:
- A significant majority of EPI sites demonstrated increasing returns to scale.
- This indicates that increasing inputs would lead to a more than proportional increase in outputs.
Conclusions:
- The assumption of constant returns to scale may not be applicable to vaccination sites.
- Findings suggest that cost-effectiveness analyses need to account for increasing returns to scale.
- This has implications for the planning and management of immunization programs.