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How is cost per treatment calculated?

The formula that we use for cost per treatment is Total Costs / Total Treatments Over Each Financial Year. For us, the most important breakdowns of cost per treatment are what we term:

Cost per delivery of treatment

The cost per delivery of treatment i.e., all the costs that go into the implementation of treating the individual infected or at-risk within in a country / total treatment within a country. These data help us to understand what funds are being allocated and expended in each country, each year and broken down by input type (per diems, fuel, etc.) and activity type (training, sensitisation, reporting, etc.). When analysing these costs on an annual basis, we observe variations between countries and also within countries across years.

These variations in cost per delivery can be explained by factors that can be expected. These include: geographic dispersion of targeted populations; the numbers targeted and treated at school and in the community; the cost and frequency of training teachers and community distributors; or factors which cannot be predicted such as fuel costs, exchange rates, and currency values over time.

The cost per delivery of treatment is critical for us and our partner countries to examine, in detail, how crucial funds from donors are being used, that there is accountability and transparency in how they have been spent and to inform annual budgets and predict effective and efficient spend for the next financial year.

Total cost per treatment

Our use of total cost per treatment is total costs (total cost per delivery of treatment in all countries, total central costs (i.e. Unlimit Health) for supporting country implementation, overheads / total treatments in all countries.

As with the annual fluctuations in the country cost per delivery of treatment, there are more minor annual fluctuations in the total cost per treatment due to the former costs, the procurement of praziquantel and central costs. However, the total cost per treatment has remained within the range of £0.31 – £0.35 for multiple years which is the reason for the message “£1 treats 3 individuals” in our advocacy materials.