Monday, September 20, 2010
WHO Model to Eliminate AIDS in South Africa Flawed
In 2008, Reuben Granich and his colleagues at the World Health Organization published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet that proposed a new strategy for combating HIV in South Africa, a country staggered by the virus, with as much as 18 percent of the population estimated to be infected.
Based on a mathematical model, the study suggested a “test-and-treat” strategy. This would involve, among other steps, testing the entire population of South Africa for HIV and immediately beginning anti-retroviral therapy for all who tested positive. The current standard of care calls for waiting until symptoms appear after diagnosis.
Such a test-and treat strategy, the authors suggested, could eventually lead to the elimination of HIV in South Africa within a decade. Since then, the utility and feasibility of this approach have been widely debated, and it remains the leading potential prevention strategy for South Africa.
One aspect of the proposal that has not been examined, however, is the strategy’s full estimated cost. Now, UCLA researchers have done their own modeling study and found that the costs have been substantially underestimated.
RSS