Human Resources for Treating HIV/AIDS: Are the Preventive Effects of Antiretroviral Treatment a Game Changer?
View/ Open
Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163960Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Bärnighausen, Till, David E. Bloom, and Salal Humair. 2016. “Human Resources for Treating HIV/AIDS: Are the Preventive Effects of Antiretroviral Treatment a Game Changer?” PLoS ONE 11 (10): e0163960. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163960. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163960.Abstract
Shortages of human resources for treating HIV/AIDS (HRHA) are a fundamental barrier to reaching universal antiretroviral treatment (ART) coverage in developing countries. Previous studies suggest that recruiting HRHA to attain universal ART coverage poses an insurmountable challenge as ART significantly increases survival among HIV-infected individuals. While new evidence about ART’s prevention benefits suggests fewer infections may mitigate the challenge, new policies such as treatment-as-prevention (TasP) will exacerbate it. We develop a mathematical model to analytically study the net effects of these countervailing factors. Using South Africa as a case study, we find that contrary to previous results, universal ART coverage is achievable even with current HRHA numbers. However, larger health gains are possible through a surge-capacity policy that aggressively recruits HRHA to reach universal ART coverage quickly. Without such a policy, TasP roll-out can increase health losses by crowding out sicker patients from treatment, unless a surge capacity exclusively for TasP is also created.Other Sources
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055321/pdf/Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAACitable link to this page
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:29408357
Collections
- SPH Scholarly Articles [6362]
Contact administrator regarding this item (to report mistakes or request changes)