Health Policy and Planning Advance Access originally published online on March 31, 2006
Health Policy and Planning 2006 21(3):241-255; doi:10.1093/heapol/czl009
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Household demand for typhoid fever vaccines in Hue, Vietnam
1National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA, 3Medicine College, Hanoi, Vietnam, 4Preventive Medicine Center, Thua Thien Hue, Vietnam, 5Research Triangle Institute, NC, USA and 6International Vaccine Institute, Seoul, Korea
Correspondence: Christine Poulos, Health, Social and Economic Research, 3040 Cornwallis Road, Hobbs Building, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709, USA. Tel: +1919–541–7130; Fax: +1919–541–6698; E-mail: cpoulos{at}rti.org
The demand function for vaccines against typhoid fever was estimated using stated preference data collected from a random sample of 1065 households in Hue, Vietnam, in 2002. These are the first estimates of private willingness-to-pay (WTP) and demand functions for typhoid vaccines in a developing country. Mean respondent WTP for a single typhoid fever vaccine ranged from US$2.30 to US$4.80. Mean household WTP estimates (vaccinating all members of the household) ranged from US$21 to US$27. Demand was similar for vaccines with different degrees of effectiveness and intervals of duration. These results suggest a significant potential for private sector provision of typhoid fever vaccines in Hue.
Key Words: private demand, vaccines, willingness-to-pay, typhoid fever vaccines, contingent valuation
1An ongoing DOMI community-based surveillance study is collecting data on the patient costs of typhoid fever (direct and indirect costs of illness). The costs borne by health facilities are also being measured. Each commune has one Community Health Centre, and the government operates three polyclinics and six hospitals in Hue. There are 53 private health facilities in Hue.
2Urban communes are characterized by population densities of more than 5000 people per km2. Semi-urban communes are characterized by population densities of less than 2000 people per km2.
3Because there was a lag of 1 year between the census and our survey, we selected households whose children were listed as aged 0–17 years in the census.
4One per cent of respondents did not indicate how certain they were of their response.
5Construct validity establishes whether the measure relates to other measures as predicted by theory.
6Predicted demand was also compared with household size, to see if the models predicted that respondents would purchase more vaccines than household members. Predicted demand was greater than household size in only 4% of households. Thus estimation of demand functions that are truncated for household size (see Cropper et al. 2004) was not undertaken.