Making HPV Vaccines Efficient: Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and the Economic Assemblage of Healthcare in Colombia

Cost-effectiveness analysis is a strategy of calculation whose main objective is to compare for making decisions about the best, the most efficient solution (costs vs benefits) to a particular problem. Cost-effectiveness analysis not only provides a framework to compare healthcare interventions which in practice seem incommensurable; it also performs a set of assumptions regarding the nature of healthcare and individuals behaviour. This article analyses the role of cost-effectiveness analysis as a device to produce value in the introduction of human papillomavirus vaccines to Colombia. In different institutional pathways and decision-making scenarios cost-effectiveness has been the key issue that justified the inclusions and exclusions that such technology entails. Cost-effectiveness justified the definition of girls as the population target and the exclusion of boys from the risks and benefits of this technology. Cost-effectiveness analysis has been a key instrument in the sexualising and desexualising of cervical cancer and human papillomavirus vaccines through the rationalisation of economic benefits.Funding Agencies|European Research CouncilEuropean Research Council (ERC) [263657]