• Kevin van Zandvoort, Natasha Howard, Sandra Mounier-Jack, and Mark Jit.
• Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, WC1E 7HT London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: Kevin.Van-Zandvoort@lshtm.ac.uk.
• Vaccine. 2019 Jan 14; 37 (3): 430-434.

BackgroundNational Immunisation Technical Advisory Groups (NITAGs) are multi-disciplinary expert groups that provide policy-makers with independent, evidence-based advice on vaccination. Between 2008 and 2017, the SIVAC Initiative supported establishment and strengthening of NITAGs in low and lower-middle income countries though its impact was never assessed quantitatively.AimTo quantitatively assess whether SIVAC support is associated with a faster rate at which NITAGs became functional based on six performance indicators.MethodsData from the World Health Organization/Unicef Joint Reporting Form (JRF) from 77 low and lower-middle-income countries were used to examine the time delay between the start of SIVAC support and NITAG functionality using a Cox proportional hazards model.ResultsCountries receiving SIVAC support took a mean of 2.00 (95% CI 1.40-2.60) years to reported functionality compared to 2.82 (95% CI 2.05-3.59) years for countries without SIVAC support. We found evidence that SIVAC support is associated with reduced time until NITAG functionality, and this association cannot fully be explained by GDP per capita, percentage of GDP spent on healthcare, or NITAG functionality score at the start of the study period. However, quality of JRF data for the questions used to calculate NITAG functionality were poor, particularly for countries not receiving SIVAC support.ConclusionSIVAC support is likely to have enabled many countries to more rapidly achieve NITAG functionality.Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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