The cost of vaccination programmes represents only 0.44% of the total health care budget in Belgium, according to the results of a study presented Thursday by the MSD Belgium laboratory and Professor Nicolas Dauby, an infectiologist at St. Pierre Hospital in Brussels.
Moreover, this cost would remain below 1% (0.80%) of the health care budget if all registered vaccines were to be included in the vaccination programmes, the laboratory noted.
"If every individual in Belgium were vaccinated in full compliance with the current vaccination schedule, the total cost of a lifetime immunisation would be €930," according to MSD and Dauby, a cost well below that of a few days' hospitalisation for meningitis or pneumonia, for example.
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"At a time when some preventable diseases are returning and authorities are looking for ways to make more efficient use of healthcare resources, improving immunisation programmes and their uptake should be a priority in our country," the experts concluded.
Vaccines are currently much-discussed in Belgium and throughout the world in the race for a vaccine against the new coronavirus.
As several companies are announcing Covid-19 vaccines of over 90% effectiveness, Flemish Welfare Minister Wouter Beke announced on Wednesday that Belgium would subscribe to the European Commission's purchase of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is said to be 95% effective.
The Brussels Times
