Background
Seasonal influenza is a major cause of mortality worldwide. Routine immunization of children
has the potential to reduce this mortality through both direct and indirect protection, but
has not been adopted by any low- or middle-income countries. We developed a framework
to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of influenza vaccination policies in developing countries
and used it to consider annual vaccination of school- and preschool-aged children with either
trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) or trivalent live-attenuated influenza vaccine
(LAIV) in Thailand. We also compared these approaches with a policy of expanding
TIV coverage in the elderly.