THURSDAY, May 23, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Never has the saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" been more accurate.
Prevention programs are 28 times more cost-effective than highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in fighting HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa, say health economists from the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF).
HAART, also known as "cocktail" therapy, uses a combination of drugs to fight HIV infection.
Ensuring a safe blood supply, voluntary counseling and testing, sex worker intervention programs, and using antiretrovirals to prevent mother-to-baby transmission of HIV can save the most lives with a limited amount of available funding, the UCSF researchers say in an article published in the May 25 issue of The Lancet.
They compared these prevention efforts to HAART using the disability-adjusted life year (DALY), a standardized measure of health benefit that reflects years of life saved by an intervention adjusted for the quality and socio-economic value of each life-year saved.
They found that prevention costs $12.50 per DALY while HAART costs $350 per DALY.
This type of ranking may be controversial, but the UCSF researchers say funding shortages make it necessary to determine how to best to use available money.
More information
This article from the FDA Consumer magazine explains the effectiveness of the AIDS "cocktail." But it also points out a number of misconceptions about longevity and unpleasant side effects from this stringent regimen.
