This article, published in Health Policy and Planning, utilizes an extended cost effectiveness analysis (ECEA) to examine how policies to expand access to surgery in rural Ethiopia would impact health, impoverishment, and equity. The study finds that health benefits, financial risk protection, and equity appear to be in tension in the expansion of access to surgical care. Health benefits from each of the examined policies accrue primarily among the poor, but without travel vouchers, many policies also induce impoverishment among the poor while providing financial risk protection to the rich. These findings call into question the equitable distribution of benefits by these policies.
This article, published in BMJ Open, aims to illustrate the size and distribution of benefits due to the treatment and prevention of diarrhoea (i.e., rotavirus vaccination) in Ethiopia. The authors use an economic model to examine the impacts of universal public finance (UPF) of diarrhoeal treatment alone, as opposed to diarrhoeal treatment along with rotavirus vaccination using extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA). The study finds that diarrhoeal treatment paired with rotavirus vaccination is more cost effective than diarrhoeal treatment alone for the examined metrics (deaths and private expenditures averted). Policymakers should consider multiple benefit streams as well as their scale and incidence when considering public financing of health interventions.