A cost-effectiveness evaluation of cervical cancer prevention strategies in China

Dr Jason Ong, honorary staff member at Health Economics Unit, and his colleagues at the Xi'an Jiaotong University Health Science Centre, China; Melbourne Sexual Health Centre; and The University of New South Wales recently published a study in The Lancet Global Health to evaluate the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios of 61 intervention strategies for cervical cancer screening, including a combination of various screening methods at different frequencies with and without vaccination, and also vaccination alone, from a health-care system perspective.

Cervical cancer continues to be a leading cause of death for women, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This research supports the need for implementing effective primary prevention strategies (i.e. human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination) and secondary prevention strategies (i.e. cervical screening tests). We found that strategies that combined screening and vaccination would be more cost-effective than screening alone strategies when the vaccination cost was less than $50 for two doses, even with a willingness-to-pay of one times the per-capita GDP.