Cost-Effectiveness of Micronutrient Interventions

There are a number of ongoing efforts throughout the developing world to address micronutrient deficiencies. It is important to understand the costs and impact of commonly employed interventions in various developing country settings. In this project, we focused on vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and vitamin A programs.

Objectives

The overall objective of this project was to assess the cost-effectiveness of various strategies for reducing micronutrient deficiencies, in particular vitamin A deficiency, in developing countries. This was done through a review of the literature and reviewing a number of NGO-led vitamin A interventions.

Results

Data are limited and the confidence interval about our estimates of cost-effectiveness is quite broad. Nonetheless, it is clear that vitamin A projects have a key role to play in reducing mortality and morbidity.

There is a need to do more nutrition interventions and to do them better. Nutrition interventions should not be put on hold while waiting for more cost-effectiveness data. We know that nutrition interventions (and vitamin A in particular) will be cost-effective in terms of lives saved and DALYs in comparison to many other commonly implemented public health interventions.

Recommendations

Programming decisions may best be made considering local opportunities and constraints, rather than cost-effective analyses done in other settings with different opportunities and constraints.

Given the low precision of cost-effectiveness estimates, the estimates can not be easily transferred to other, different situations or locations. Decision makers may take comfort in the knowledge that a logically designed and efficiently implemented vitamin A intervention will be relatively cost-effective, even if the exact cost-effectiveness is unknown.

The project report is available here.