Cost estimates were converted from Year 2005 international dollars to 2010 US dollars using the Consumer Price Index [33] and official exchange rates [34]. Vaccination program costs include

those costs associated with storing, delivering and administering the vaccine once it arrives in the country. The vaccine program costs LGK-974 ic50 were estimated using the WHO Global Immunization Vision and Strategy (GIVS) costing tool [35]. A program cost per dose was estimated for each of the countries, and a regional, weighted average was calculated and used in the analysis. We used updated country estimates of childhood deaths due to diarrhea and rotavirus-specific illness, to revise the baseline disease burden figures for our analysis [1] and [36]. We estimated rotavirus-associated outpatient visits and hospitalizations by multiplying the total diarrhea-related outpatient visits and hospitalizations by the estimated proportion attributable to rotavirus [37]. Rotavirus medical visits and deaths were distributed into

the following age categories: 0–2 months, 3–5 months, 6–8 months, 9–11 months, 12–23 months, 24–35 months, 36–47 months, and 48–59 months [19]. Recent clinical trials of rotavirus vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia found lower levels of vaccine efficacy than observed in trials in Latin America that were used in the original model [21], [22] and [23]. As noted by the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), this finding is not unexpected selleckchem [38] and is consistent with results from studies of other live, oral vaccines such as polio, typhoid and cholera that suggest lower efficacy or immunogenicity in developing country populations compared to industrialized countries [39], [40] and [41]. Efficacy estimates against severe rotavirus diarrhea, any rotavirus diarrhea,

and all-cause severe gastroenteritis for countries in the African and Asian regions were calculated and applied by child mortality strata (see Table 1). Pooled random effects mean estimates from the first trials conducted in the high mortality countries of Ghana, Kenya, Bangladesh, South Africa, Malawi and Mali were applied to countries with under-5 mortality rates >30/1000. Estimates from the study in Vietnam were applied to countries with child mortality rates ≤30/1000. Previous estimates from trials in Latin America were still used for Latin American and Caribbean countries. Estimates of efficacy against severe rotavirus gastroenteritis are used as a proxy for efficacy against mortality and hospitalization, and efficacy against any rotavirus gastroenteritis corresponds to efficacy against outpatient visits. Atherly et al. [19] demonstrated that estimates of the impact and cost-effectiveness of vaccination over time depend heavily on assumptions about which countries introduce vaccine, the timing of their introduction and how price changes over time as a result of market factors such as increased demand and the entry of new manufacturers.