The provision of life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment has emerged as a key component of the global response to HIV/AIDS, yet little is known about the impact of this intervention on the welfare of children whose parents receive treatment. In this working paper CGD post-doctoral fellow Harsha Thirumurthy and his co-authors use longitudinal household survey data collected in collaboration with a treatment program in western Kenya to provide the first estimate of the impact of ARV treatment on children’s schooling and nutrition. They find that children's weekly hours of school attendance increase by over 20 percent within six months after treatment is initiated for the adult household member. Young children's short-term nutritional status also improves dramatically. Since the improvements in children’s schooling and nutrition at these critical early ages will affect their socio-economic outcomes in adulthood, the authors argue that the widespread provision of ARV treatment is also likely to generate significant long-run macroeconomic benefits.
Equity and HIV/AIDS
The Pan African Treatment Access Movement (PATAM) is a social movement comprised of individuals and organizations dedicated to mobilising communities, political leaders, and all sectors of society to ensure access to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, as a fundamental part of comprehensive care for all people with HIV/AIDS in Africa. However, the year 2005 saw some changes that affected the movement’s effectiveness and threatened its survival. These made it necessary for the PATAM leadership to convene a strategic planning workshop and make decisions concerning the movement’s future. The workshop, which was hosted by the ALCS and funded by ActionAid, was divided into two parts. This document provides a detailed report of the workshop highlights.
Understanding the epidemiological HIV context is critical in building effective setting-specific preventive strategies. We examined HIV prevalence patterns in selected communities of men and women aged 15–59 years in Zambia.
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has launched a new policy to ensure that HIV-positive refugees and other displaced people around the world have access to life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) medication. The policy, designed to offer guidance to UNHCR and its partners as well as host governments, aims to integrate ARV provision as part of a comprehensive HIV/AIDS programme for refugees that includes prevention, care and support.
Given the size of the HIV epidemic in South Africa and other developing countries, scaling up antiretroviral treatment (ART) represents one of the key public health challenges of the next decade. Appropriate priority setting and budgeting can be assisted by economic data on the costs and cost-effectiveness of ART. The objectives of this research were therefore to estimate HIV healthcare utilisation, the unit costs of HIV services and the cost per life year (LY) and quality adjusted life year (QALY) gained of HIV treatment interventions from a provider's perspective.
This report summarises the findings of the 2005 Zambia HIV/AIDS Service Provision Assessment (Zambia HIV/AIDS SPA) Survey carried out by the Zambia Ministry of Health and the Zambia Central Statistical Office. ORC Macro provided technical assistance and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provided funding.
"We have the goal: universal access to prevention, care,treatment and support by 2010. We have the means: the United Nations review session on HIV/AIDS in June declared that the drugs and the resources exist. Do we have the will? The 16th International Conference on AIDS in Toronto, August 13–18, was a testing ground and the jury is very definitely still out. The Toronto conference was the largest and perhaps the best publicized of its kind. It had significant African, HIV-positive and youth participation, but remained predominantly Northern (and North American), professional and male. It needed much more extensive representation from countries facing growing threats in Eastern Europe, Central, Eastern and Southern Asia."
The issue of violence exacerbating the spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly in women, has remained a hot one at the World Social Forum (WSF). From Africa to Asia, activists are reiterating that violence against women remains a threat to the HIV/AIDS fight, and that without governments addressing the matter, winning the war against the disease will be an uphill task.
It is the inequalities between women and men that are driving the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and in turn this pandemic is exacerbating existing gender inequalities. However, it is the women of Africa who are particularly vulnerable and bearing the burden of this pandemic. As Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, so often illustrates, HIV/AIDS in Africa has a female face, and this female face will be eradicated from Africa if we do not respond adequately. As a direct result of these gender inequalities, women and girls are the most vulnerable to infection — 57 per cent of persons who are HIV positive in sub-Saharan Africa are female, according to the AIDS Epidemic Update 2005 — and at the same time it is women and girls who carry the burden of caring for the sick and dying.
The island nation of Madagascar, off the coast of Southern Africa, has so far been spared an HIV/AIDS epidemic, unlike its continental neighbours, but health officials have warned that the country cannot afford to be complacent. The next decade presents a window of opportunity; a chance for the government to take action to prevent HIV prevalence from climbing. Madagascar's National Committee for the Fight Against AIDS (CNLS) has estimated that the country rate in 2005 was 0.95 percent, considerably lower than other countries in the region, where rates hover around 20 percent.