The costs associated with the public health management of a cluster of meningococcal infection in England.

The human and public health costs of meningococcal disease are substantial, with 201 cases reported in England between April and June 2013. It is estimated that serogroup B accounts for 85-90% of all cases of meningococcal disease. A vaccine against serogroup B meningococcal disease was approved by the European Medicines Agency in November 2012. In March 2014 the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommended that the vaccine be offered to babies at 2, 4 and 12 months of age, provided it can be procured at a cost effective price. Using a real cluster of two cases of meningococcal infection in the UK, we estimate that the cost of managing two cases was 17 times more than the cost of managing a single case (£5584.39 versus £317.72, respectively). We recommend that vaccine cost effectiveness models should take a full account of the costs involved in managing cases and clusters of meningococcal disease.