CDC: Vaccines prevented 730k premature deaths, saved U.S. $1.7 trillion over past two decades

New analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that vaccines given to American children between 1994 and 2013 will prevent more than 730,000 premature deaths and yield nearly $1.7 trillion in health cost savings (Source: “CDC: Vaccines given over 20 years prevented 731,700 premature deaths,” Los Angeles Times, April 24, 2014).

Researchers decided to examine the costs and benefits of vaccinations of the federal Vaccines for Children (VFC) program two decades after it was implemented in 1994. The program helps make sure that kids don’t miss recommended vaccines due to an inability to pay.

According to the CDC report, over the entire lifetimes of the 78.6 million U.S. babies born in the first two decades of VFC, routine childhood vaccines will prevent an estimated 731,700 premature deaths, 21 million hospitalizations and 322 million illnesses. That works out to an average of 4.1 fewer illnesses per child and 0.27 fewer hospitalizations per child. (The researchers did not include vaccines for hepatitis A, seasonal flu or adolescent vaccines in their calculations.)