Question

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering sending in a team of experts to deal with an outbreak of schistosomiasis in a developing country. It costs $25,000 for every additional five team members sent. Sending a larger team will allow WHO to prevent more fatalities, and they estimate the following effectiveness:
Number of Team Members Number of Deaths

Number of team members	Number of deaths
0	1200
5	500
10	200
15	100
20	60
25	40
30	30
35	25
40	22
45	20
50	20

a) Please plot the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios in a two-dimensional graph with total effectiveness along the horizontal axis and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios along the vertical axis.
b) If saving a life is valued at $10,000, what is the optimal number of team members sent?
c) Suppose the WHO has a total budget of $150,000 to be spent on fighting this epidemic. How would your answer to b) change?

Answer 1

solution:

a) Following graph shows total effectiveness(in terms of total number of lives saved) vs incremental cost for this we have taken number  of lives to be 1200 and we can see from the graph that total effectiveness increases with incremental costs.

To Rs 8 ਓ 4 . W (25 ਦਾ ਨਰ ਨੂੰ ਹਰ ਹੀ ਤੇਲ ਜੋਲ ਹੋਮ ਨ ਸਾਲ ਦੀ altes eysel koos WAHES

b) For $25,000 the number of people sent are 5 hence for $10,000 dollars the number of people sent are 2

explanation: x(number of people sent)=(10,000* 5)/25,000=2.

c) The WHO has a total of $150,000 for this amount of budget it should be divided efficiently as $25,000 is needed for every 5 people in the team hence according to this 30 people can be sent and also in order to spend it in an efficient manner,

• If we spend $125000 only then a team of 25 people can be sent and this will drastically reduce the number of deaths from 1200 to 40 already and by going further it can be seen that although the WHO is spending money but the effective no of lives saved have not increased by much of a difference hence the remaining money can be spent wisely.
• Rest of the money can be spent in spreading the awareness and also the precautions which should take in order to save themselves from this epidemic,also the WHO can spend the amount in making available the vaccines which are recquired for the prevention and for the treatment purpose.