Study Urges Maximizing Benefits of AIDS Funding

A new International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) study on the impact of HIV/AIDS services scale-up shows improvements in some areas of health care despite ongoing challenges for fragile health care systems. The report, titled "Missing the Target 6 - The HIV/AIDS Response and Health Systems," focused on six countries: Argentina, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

According to the report, the AIDS response has attracted the largest share of health financing, increased the number of trained health care workers, improved the management of people living with the disease, and allowed for the creation of HIV clinics that treat TB and other opportunistic infections.

But HIV/AIDS has placed extra pressure on health infrastructures in each of the countries studied, the report said. For example, the number of health workers has not increased with the demand for services. And in places like Uganda, public health staff have moved to HIV clinics where they are better paid, creating a deficit in the institutions they left.

ITPC recommends that donors devote more resources to improving infrastructure, particularly increasing the number of laboratories with diagnostic capabilities. Governments should also work to streamline the supply and logistics chain to ensure uninterrupted access to AIDS drugs and other essential medicines.

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