MCMARCEL - Belgium

The objective of this RSV modelling project is to evaluate the impact and cost-effectiveness of potential maternal and neonatal RSV immunisation strategies in Belgium. The modelling structure is a static model that tracks monthly birth cohorts of children from birth to 5 years old. The acronym stands for Multi-Country Model Application for RSV Cost-Effectiveness poLicy (McMarcel).

McMarcel has been conceived to study the application of maternal vaccination and monoclonal antibody prevention strategies for 73 Gavi-eligible countries. Later on, we adopted the code to perform studies (West-)European countries or regions. We are aware that our approach underestimates the benefits of vaccination (without additional adjustments to cope with potential herd immunity impacts), though we are keeping this strategy for feasibility reasons.

This software contains the model implementation and input to conduct a health economic analysis and is distributed under the terms of the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3 licence. If you use (parts of) this modelling project, please cite: Getaneh et al. (2023) Cost-effectiveness of monoclonal antibody and maternal immunization against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants: Evaluation for six European countries. Vaccine. 41(9), 1623-1631.

To facilitate public access to the model methods while preserving data confidentiality, we applied stochastic data perturbation to key epidemiological input data. Specifically, we added non-systematic noise to these files, which are marked with an "X" (e.g. BELX or RESCEUX). This approach enables the reproduction of output that is epidemiologically non-actionable while retaining internal consistency for methodological replication.

Note that the original framework includes automated output testing and parallel processing. To enhance transferability, we provide a serial implementation here. Please contact us for additional model features and post-processing code.