Correspondence Address:
Dr. Rujittika Mungmunpuntipantip
Private Academic Consultant Center, Bangkok
Thailand

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Dengue is an important tropical mosquito-borne disease. Dengue is common in many tropical areas, including Southeast Asia. The disease can cause an acute febrile illness with hemorrhagic complications.[1] The dengue vaccine is a new vaccine for prevention of dengue. However, the cost-effectiveness of dengue vaccine is considered low and it might not be useful for disease prevention.[2] A similar observation is also observed in another Southeast Asian report from Indonesia.[3] Adjustment of the costs is necessary for cost effectiveness in many tropical countries.[4],[5]

Regardless of the cost, an interesting question is the clinical utility of dengue vaccination. Here, the authors use local available data from a tropical country in Indochina, where dengue is endemic for utility analysis of dengue vaccination (local data are available at https://www.pidst.or.th/A655.html). The utility is defined as the overall advantage of vaccination and calculated by “disease preventive rate for hospitalization due to vaccination – disease occurrence rate of post vaccination severe dengue.” The study compared four different options: (a) no vaccination with prior dengue, (b) no vaccination without prior dengue, (c) dengue vaccination for cases with prior dengue, and (d) dengue vaccination for cases without prior dengue. The result is shown in [Table 1].{Table 1}

According to the analysis, it is clear that the vaccination will be useful only if it is given to a case with previous dengue. Furthermore, the overall benefit of dengue vaccination in cases where no previous dengue option exists is less than the benefit of no dengue vaccination in cases where no previous dengue option exists. Hence, pre-vaccination screening for previous dengue might be considered for implementation of dengue vaccination.

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