Economic Burden of the Nova Scotia Mumps Outbreak

Abstract

Infectious disease outbreaks can have a significant impact on healthcare resources and are disruptive to routine healthcare programs and services. There is very little literature on the economic burden of infectious disease outbreaks; thus, this research attempts to provide insight into the healthcare resources used to contain a mumps outbreak.

The Nova Scotia 2007 mumps outbreak provides an opportunity to produce a costing framework to capture the economic burden an outbreak has on the Nova Scotia healthcare system. The costing framework for this study used an accounting model to costing; in particular, it used an activity-based costing approach. The total mumps outbreak cost is estimated at $2,478,500 or $3,511 per mumps case.

Given the significant impact an infectious disease outbreak has on healthcare resources, more economic evaluations should be done to help guide policies around infectious disease prevention strategies, and to maximize the allocation of healthcare resources.