Avian Influenza and the Pandemic Threat

The report has two target audiences: (a) project planners, who will benefit from the information of the costs of setting up surveillance and control systems to be used as benchmarks when planning preparedness and control operations; and (b) policy planners at the decision-making level, who would use the information on the efficiency and effectiveness gains to guide them in the decision-making process regarding the eventual introduction of One Health approaches. This report disaggregates costs by task, making explicit those activities that are critical for effectiveness and identifying scope for efficiencies.

The report includes a cost-benefit analysis, which corrects for the very low probability of pandemics and shows that benefits far exceed costs in all plausible scenarios. For instance, if the international community invests [in One Health systems] at the upper end of the range (US$3.4 billion per year), the annual expected rate of return would be between 44 percent and 71 percent (corresponding to, respectively, half or all mild pandemics being prevented).

A severe pandemic costing US$3 trillion may occur, on average, once in a hundred years. If the investments in One Health systems are made and such a pandemic is prevented, the global expected benefits are US$30 billion per year. Every year, an investment of US$3.4 billion would produce an expected benefit of US$30 billion for the international community. The challenge confronting policy-makers is therefore to review these and other assessments of the benefits of pandemic prevention and weigh them against the cost of prevention, as well as returns on other public investments.

This report finds that investment in One Health systems for prevention and control of zoonotic diseases offers extraordinarily high expected benefits, with rates of return far above those of other public and private investments. All countries have an interest in realizing these benefits.

Link to the web version of the report:
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/06/16360943/people-pathog...