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Financial and Economic Costs of the Elimination and Eradication
                of Onchocerciasis (River Blindness) in Africa

# metadata.dc.description.abstract[].value
BACKGROUND: Onchocerciasis (river blindness) is a parasitic
                disease transmitted by blackflies. Symptoms include severe
                itching, skin lesions, and vision impairment including
                blindness. More than 99% of all cases are concentrated in
                sub-Saharan Africa. Fortunately, vector control and
                community-directed treatment with ivermectin have significantly
                decreased morbidity, and the treatment goal is shifting from
                control to elimination in Africa. METHODS: We estimated
                financial resources and societal opportunity costs associated
                with scaling up community-directed treatment with ivermectin and
                implementing surveillance and response systems in endemic
                African regions for alternative treatment goals-control,
                elimination, and eradication. We used a micro-costing approach
                that allows adjustment for time-variant resource utilization and
                for the heterogeneity in the demographic, epidemiological, and
                political situation. RESULTS: The elimination and eradication
                scenarios, which include scaling up treatments to hypo-endemic
                and operationally challenging areas at the latest by 2021 and
                implementing intensive surveillance, would allow savings of $1.5
                billion and $1.6 billion over 2013-2045 as compared to the
                control scenario. Although the elimination and eradication
                scenarios would require higher surveillance costs ($215 million
                and $242 million) than the control scenario ($47 million),
                intensive surveillance would enable treatments to be safely
                stopped earlier, thereby saving unnecessary costs for prolonged
                treatments as in the control scenario lacking such surveillance
                and response systems. CONCLUSIONS: The elimination and
                eradication of onchocerciasis are predicted to allow substantial
                cost-savings in the long run. To realize cost-savings,
                policymakers should keep empowering community volunteers, and
                pharmaceutical companies would need to continue drug donation.
                To sustain high surveillance costs required for elimination and
                eradication, endemic countries would need to enhance their
                domestic funding capacity. Societal and political will would be
                critical to sustaining all of these efforts in the long term.

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Reproducció del document publicat a:
                http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004056

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PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2015, vol. 9, num. 9, p. e0004056

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Articles publicats en revistes (ISGlobal)

# metadata.dc.title[].value
Financial and Economic Costs of the Elimination and Eradication
                of Onchocerciasis (River Blindness) in Africa