The "Economic Impact of HIV" project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to synthesise the evidence on the economic impact of HIV into a series of 17 policy briefs that can help decision-makers in the ministries of finance and health in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) decide on the future financing of their country’s HIV program. The project incorporates a series of webinars with an academic and LMIC government staff audience aimed at refining the content and
South Africa carries 3% of the world’s tuberculosis (TB) case burden and is experiencing a dual TB/HIV epidemic: 59% of adult TB patients are also HIV positive. There are no recent published estimates on the costs and outcomes of drug-susceptible TB in South Africa for adults in an out-patient setting with the exception of one paper published in 2003 (using 1997 data) and another in 2006 (using 2001 data) . The proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) system aims to re-engineer primary
The World Health Organization recommends national programs use viral load monitoring for patients on ART1 to determine whether treatment has been successful and to guide clinicians on when to switch treatment to second-line regimens, indicated if the virus is resistant to first-line therapy. Not all countries are able to provide viral load testing as part of national programs but for those that do, patients with an elevated viral load (VL) are recommended to undergo adherence counselling and
HIV testing represents the primary entry point into HIV care and treatment programs for people living with HIV and is the first of UNAID’s 90-90-901 targets. South Africa made a large effort to expand HIV testing in April 2010 by implementing a national testing campaign2. This campaign, designed to increase awareness of HIV status, sought to test 15 million people by June 2011. The monthly number of people tested for HIV increased from approximately 240,000 per month in the period prior to
During 2018, South Africa was estimated to have more than seven million people living with HIV1, representing the largest single country epidemic2 and treatment program. 3 In September 2016, the National Department of Health revised its treatment guidelines to extend the availability of ART to all people living with HIV, irrespective of CD4 cell count and stage of disease3. This policy, widely referred to as “treat all” or “universal test and treat” (UTT) holds promise to offer
The World Health Organization recommends "sameday" initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV patients eligible and ready1. This recommendation has been adopted by both South Africa2 and Kenya3. Identifying efficient, safe, and feasible procedures for determining same-day eligibility and readiness is now a priority. The WHO guidelines cited evidence from clinical trials suggesting that offering treatment to patients at their first clinical encounter has the potential to increase
The Financial Capacity Building for Provinces (FINCAP) project, run in partnership by the Centre for Economic Governance and Accountability in Africa (CEGAA) and the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office (HE2RO), focuses on providing capacity building and technical support to HIV, STI and TB (HAST) programme and finance managers in provincial departments of health in South Africa. The intervention was designed to improve budget planning, costing, expenditure tracking and reporting
