IPTi |
Economic Evaluation of Intermittent Preventive Treatment for Infants (IPTi) for Malaria and Anaemia Control
In a global context of scarce resources, policy makers working in malaria endemic developing countries need to have precise information to help them in deciding which interventions are the most cost-effective for malaria control, and thus provide value-for-money for spending of resources on health interventions.
Funded from two separate grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the SCIH Systems Support Unit (SySU) was mandated to evaluate cost-effectiveness of IPTi in twelve different sites spread across eleven countries. The work falls under the IPTi Consortium
The first grant (2004-8) was managed by the Swiss Tropical Institute in collaboration with the Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre (IHRDC). The overall aim of the grant was to evaluate the community-level effectiveness of intermittent preventive treatment for infants in Southern Tanzania (Mtwara and Lindi Regions). SySU provided the economic leadership for this grant, to evaluate cost-effectiveness of IPTi in this community trial.
The second grant mandate (2006-8) was to provide technical leadership for the Cost-Effectiveness Working Group of the IPTi Consortium, to provide cost and cost-effectiveness evidence to international and national decision makers from all remaining IPTi trials under the IPTi Consortium: Gabon (Lambaréné), Kenya (Kisumu), Mozambique (Manhia), Papua New Guinea (East Sepik), and Tanzania (Kilimanjaro). The CEWG core team was based at the Swiss TPH in Basel and the Hospital Clinic Barcelona with local teams in place in all of the above sites. The CEWG also played a supportive role to the economic evaluation of implementation studies coordinated by UNICEF in a further six countries (Benin, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Senegal).
The aims of the CEWG in all these sites was to:
- Measure the costs of implementing IPTi from both health system and patient perspective. The intervention was delivered through the Expanded Programme of Immunisation, with three doses given to each infant in their first year of life.
- Measure cost savings associated with less treatment seeking for malaria and anaemia, following an effective IPTi intervention
- Present cost-effectiveness of the IPTi strategy
- Present budget implications of the IPTi strategy for the Ministry of Health
- Evaluate health financing potential for the IPTi strategy