An Economic Evaluation of a Vaccine Acquisition Strategy to Mitigate Acute Diarrheal Illness Among Deployed US Military Forces
Abstract
Background. To this day acute diarrheal illness continues to be a significant health threat for deployed military personnel, resulting not only in significant numbers of lost days, but also increased health care utilization, and compromise in mission capability and effectiveness. Despite the advances in environmental health interventions and effective empiric treatment regimens, the high incidence and disease burden associated with enteric infections continues unabated. Vaccines have been proposed as a cost effective method of primary prevention in operational settings where the risk of exposure is high. However, infectious diarrhea is but one of many threats to deployed service members, and in the face of limited resources, a decision to pursue a vaccine acquisition strategy should be based on sound epidemiological evidence that weighs the costs and benefits of such a strategy compared to alternatives. Therefore, my study was conductedto characterize and quantify the pathogen-specific burden of travelers diarrhea (TD) among deployed US military personnel using best available evidence in order to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a vaccine acquisition strategy against three primary causes of TD compared with current clinical management in a deployed setting.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 27, 2007
- Accession Number
- AD1014051
Entities
People
- Mark S. Riddle
Organizations
- Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences