IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0241852.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cost-effectiveness of targeted screening for active pulmonary tuberculosis among asylum-seekers: A modelling study with screening data from a German federal state (2002-2015)

Author

Listed:
  • Katharina Wahedi
  • Louise Biddle
  • Kayvan Bozorgmehr

Abstract

Screening asylum-seekers for active pulmonary tuberculosis is common practice among many European countries with low incidence of tuberculosis. The reported yields vary substantially, partly due to the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of asylum-seeking populations. Rather than screening all new arrivals (indiscriminate screening), a few countries apply targeted screening based on incidence of tuberculosis in asylum-seekers’ country of origin. However, evaluations of its cost-effectiveness have been scarce. The aim of this modelling study was to assess whether the introduction of a screening threshold based on the tuberculosis incidence in the country of origin is sensible from an economic perspective. To this end, we compare the current, indiscriminate screening policy for pulmonary tuberculosis in Germany with a hypothetical targeted screening programme using several potential screening thresholds based on WHO-reported incidence of tuberculosis in countries of origin. Screening data is taken from a large German federal state over 14 years (2002–2015). Incremental cost-effectiveness is measured as cost per case found and cost per case prevented. Our analysis shows that incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of screening asylum-seekers from countries with an incidence of 50 to 250/100,000 range between 15,000€ and 17,000€ per additional case found when compared to lower thresholds. The ICER for screening asylum-seekers from countries with an incidence

Suggested Citation

  • Katharina Wahedi & Louise Biddle & Kayvan Bozorgmehr, 2020. "Cost-effectiveness of targeted screening for active pulmonary tuberculosis among asylum-seekers: A modelling study with screening data from a German federal state (2002-2015)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-19, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0241852
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241852
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241852
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241852&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0241852?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. La’Marcus T Wingate & Margaret S Coleman & Drew L Posey & Weigong Zhou & Christine K Olson & Brian Maskery & Martin S Cetron & John A Painter, 2015. "Cost-Effectiveness of Screening and Treating Foreign-Born Students for Tuberculosis before Entering the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-19, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      More about this item

      Statistics

      Access and download statistics

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0241852. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.