Objectives To estimate the potential economic impact of pandemic influenza, associated behavioural responses, school closures, and vaccination on the United Kingdom.Design A computable general equilibrium model of the UK economy was specified for various combinations of mortality and morbidity from pandemic influenza, vaccine efficacy, school closures, and prophylactic absenteeism using published data.Setting The 2004 UK economy (the most up to date available with suitable economic data).Main outcome measures The economic impact of various scenarios with different pandemic severity, vaccination, school closure, and prophylactic absenteeism specified in terms of gross domestic product, output from different economic sectors, and equivalent variation.Results The costs related to illness alone ranged between 0.5% and 1.0% of gross domestic product (£8.4bn to £16.8bn) for low fatality scenarios, 3.3% and 4.3% (£55.5bn to £72.3bn) for high fatality scenarios, and larger still for an extreme pandemic. School closure increases the economic impact, particularly for mild pandemics. If widespread behavioural change takes place and there is large scale prophylactic absence from work, the economic impact would be notably increased with few health benefits. Vaccination with a pre-pandemic vaccine could save 0.13% to 2.3% of gross domestic product (£2.2bn to £38.6bn); a single dose of a matched vaccine could save 0.3% to 4.3% (£5.0bn to £72.3bn); and two doses of a matched vaccine could limit the overall economic impact to about 1% of gross domestic product for all disease scenarios.Conclusion Balancing school closure against “business as usual” and obtaining sufficient stocks of effective vaccine are more important factors in determining the economic impact of an influenza pandemic than is the disease itself. Prophylactic absence from work in response to fear of infection can add considerably to the economic impact.

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It has been argued that women's economic vulnerability and dependence on men increases their vulnerability to HIV by constraining their ability to negotiate the conditions, including sexual abstinence, condom use and multiple partnerships, which shape their risk of infection. In the face of escalating infection rates among women, and particularly young women, many have pointed to the potential importance of economic empowerment strategies for HIV prevention responses. Global evidence suggests that the relationship between poverty and HIV risk is complex, and that poverty on its own cannot be viewed simplistically as a driver of the HIV epidemic. Rather, its role appears to be multidimensional and to interact with a range of other factors, including mobility, social and economic inequalities and social capital, which converge in a particularly potent way for young women living in southern Africa. To date, there have been few interventions that have explicitly attempted to combine economic empowerment with the goal of HIV prevention, and even fewer that have been rigorously evaluated. This paper explores how programmes such as microfinance, livelihood training and efforts to safeguard women's food security and access to property have begun to incorporate an HIV prevention focus. Although such circumscribed interventions, by themselves, are unlikely to lead to significant impacts on a national or regional scale, they are useful for testing cross-sectoral partnership models, generating practical lessons and providing a metaphor for what might be possible in promoting women's economic empowerment more broadly. Despite numerous calls to 'mainstream AIDS' in economic development, cross-sectoral responses have not been widely taken up by government or other stakeholders. We suggest potential reasons for limited progress to date and conclude by presenting programme and policy recommendations for further exploring and harnessing linkages between economic empowerment and HIV prevention in Southern Africa.