On World AIDS Day President Bush addressed the Saddleback Civil forum on Global Health. The President commented that since 2000
(when he came into office) the US has spent $99 billion on domestic AIDS
cases.
$99
billion has been consumed by only 350,000 patients on ARV treatment. This indicates that the cost of providing treatment (testing, monitoring, hospitalisation and so on) far exceeds the cost of buying drugs.
This is a harbinger of what will happen in much of sub-Saharan Africa. The US has spent billions on treating its own patients, despite having one of the best healthcare systems in the world, which uses the highest quality drugs, and the strictest monitoring and testing. This kind of high quality medical environment helps slow down considerably the onset of drug resistance, which eventually happens in all HIV patients.
Healthcare systems in much of Africa, by contrast, don't even begin to approach the quality found in the US. It seems probable, therefore, that the millions of patients who have begun treatment since 2000 will experience far higher rates of drug resistance, sooner. And the medical care costs of these patients will soon outstrip by many order of magnitude the cost of buying therapies.
The donor community has committed to financing universal treatment for AIDS patients. This is a financial committment in perpetuity.
I'm not sure any donor has yet calculated what is going to happen when costs start exploding 10 years down the line, when drug resistance sets in.
They need to get their calculators out, pronto.
This is a harbinger of what will happen in much of sub-Saharan Africa. The US has spent billions on treating its own patients, despite having one of the best healthcare systems in the world, which uses the highest quality drugs, and the strictest monitoring and testing. This kind of high quality medical environment helps slow down considerably the onset of drug resistance, which eventually happens in all HIV patients.
Healthcare systems in much of Africa, by contrast, don't even begin to approach the quality found in the US. It seems probable, therefore, that the millions of patients who have begun treatment since 2000 will experience far higher rates of drug resistance, sooner. And the medical care costs of these patients will soon outstrip by many order of magnitude the cost of buying therapies.
The donor community has committed to financing universal treatment for AIDS patients. This is a financial committment in perpetuity.
I'm not sure any donor has yet calculated what is going to happen when costs start exploding 10 years down the line, when drug resistance sets in.
They need to get their calculators out, pronto.
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