Priority Setting and Ethics

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 PLOS ONE, conducts an extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA) of two fully publicly financed interventions in Ethiopia: pneumococcal vaccination for newborns and pneumonia treatment for under-five children. The authors apply ECEA methods and estimate the program impact on: (1) government program costs; (2) pneumonia and pneumococcal deaths averted; (3) household expenses related to pneumonia/pneumococcal disease treatment averted; (4) prevention of household medical impoverishment; and (5) distributional consequences across the wealth strata of the population. The results indicate that vaccine and treatment interventions for children can bring large health and financial benefits to households in Ethiopia, most particularly among the poorest socio-economic groups.

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.

This article, published in the Lancet Global Health, aims to evaluate the health and financial risk protection benefits of selected interventions that could be publicly financed by the government of Ethiopia. The authors used an extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA) to assess the health gains (deaths averted) and financial risk protection afforded (cases of poverty averted) by a bundle of nine interventions that the Government of Ethiopia aims to make universally available. This approach incorporates financial risk protection into the economic evaluation of health interventions and therefore provides information about the efficiency of attainment of both major objectives of a health system: improved health and financial risk protection. It is especially relevant for the design and sequencing of universal health coverage to meet the needs of poor populations.