The Costs of Improving Health Emergency Preparedness: A Systematic Review and Analysis of Multi-country Studies

Background: Investing in health emergency preparedness is critical to the safety, welfare and stability of communities and countries worldwide. Despite the global push to increase investments, questions remain around how much should be spent and what to focus on. We conducted a systematic review and analysis of studies that costed improvements to health emergency preparedness to help to answer these questions.

Methods: We searched for studies that estimated the costs of improving health emergency preparedness and that were published between 1 January 2000 and 14 May 2021, using PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, EconLit, and National Health Service Economic Evaluation Databases (PROSPERO CRD42021254428). We also searched grey literature repositories and contacted subject experts. We included studies that estimated the costs of improving preparedness at the global level and/or at the national level across at least ten countries, covered two or more technical areas in the WHO Benchmarks for International Health Regulations (IHR) Capacities, and included activities focused on human health. We mapped costs across technical areas in the WHO Benchmarks for IHR Capacities.

Findings: Ten studies met our inclusion criteria. Costing methods varied substantially across included studies and cost estimates ranged from US$1·6 billion per year to improve capacities across 139 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to US$43 billion per year to support national-level activities worldwide and implement global-level initiatives, such as research and development for health technologies (diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines). Two recent studies estimated costs by drawing on IHR Monitoring and Evaluation Framework country capacity data, with one study estimating costs across 67 LMICs of US$15·4 billion per year (US$29·1 billion including upfront capital costs) and the other calculating costs for the 196 States Parties to the IHR of US$24·8 billion per year. Differences in included studies' methods, and the characteristics of countries considered, mean it is difficult to make like-for-like comparisons of the absolute costs or per-capita costs estimated by studies.

Interpretation: Improving health emergency preparedness worldwide will require substantial and sustained increases in investments. Further guidance on estimating the size of those investments can help to standardise methods, allowing greater interpretation and comparison across studies/countries. As well as greater transparency and detail in the reporting of methods by studies focused on this topic, this can help support estimates of global resource requirements and facilitate investments towards improving preparedness for future pandemics.

Funding: None.