The Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals (IVB) in WHO has developed a generic costing and planning tool for cervical cancer prevention and control. The WHO Cervical Cancer Prevention and Control Costing (C4P) tool has been developed specifically to assist low- and middle-income countries in planning and costing cervical cancer control strategies. The tool has been built in Microsoft Excel and consists of two independent modules:
● HPV vaccination module (C4P-HPV tool)
● Cervical cancer screening and treatment module (C4P-ST tool)
Both modules generate financial and economic cost estimates for programmes, either to project future costs or to retrospectively evaluate programme spending. The costs are broken down by cost activity components.
The C4P-HPV tool is used for estimating the additional resources required to introduce HPV vaccine into an existing immunization programme for a five-year scale-up. The cost output is displayed in terms of total costs and costs per fully immunized person. Both introduction and recurrent costs are available to assist programme planning. The C4P-ST tool estimates additional resources required to add cervical cancer screening and treatment to an existing health programme, and provides estimates of cost per screening or treatment service over a five-year period.
The WHO C4P tool provides access to transparent underlying calculations and assumptions. The C4P-HPV tool is currently available in English and French by selecting preferred language within the tool; and the C4P-ST tool is currently available in English.
Potential target audiences of the WHO C4P tool include: mediators (i.e., international consultants, technical assistants and trainers) of costing and planning activities, supervisors, sponsors, and managers of costing and planning activities, developers of costing and planning tools, subject matter experts in cervical cancer prevention and control programming, and subject matter experts in costing and planning.
