Vaccine Impact Assessments for Lassa fever and Chikungunya Vaccines

Global health funders are met with the difficult task of deciding which vaccines to prioritize given budget constraints, data limitations and fundamental uncertainty about future epidemic risk. The OxLiv Consortium, a collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Liverpool, has been awarded multiple grants from CEPI to conduct impact assessments for forthcoming vaccines targeting emerging infectious diseases in low- and middle-income countries. The project’s first phase proposes the development of mathematical models to assess the potential health and economic impacts of various proposed rollout strategies for Lassa fever and Chikungunya vaccines. This work also involves assessments of the potential impacts of achieving 100 Days Mission vaccination targets in the hypothetical event of novel pathogens related to Lassa virus or Chikungunya virus emerging in the near future and causing the next pandemic. The project’s second phase focuses on Lassa fever in endemic regions and proposes model-based assessments of the impacts of targeting vaccination to particular high-risk groups, such as children, healthcare workers and women of childbearing age. Finally, the project’s third phase focuses on Chikungunya in several low- and middle-income countries and proposes cost-effectiveness analyses for forthcoming vaccines across a range of high-risk groups.