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The international community grapples with priorities in fighting disease
Published on Wednesday, Dec 03, 2008
Spending on HIV/AIDS is generating an intense international debate about priorities in global public health, especially about balance in the allocation of scarce funds for health care. As UNAIDS and advocates press for higher spending, other public health experts are concerned that the spending on AIDS is disproportionate, diverting resources from other critical health issues and diseases, such as pneumonia, which kills many more children in a year than AIDS.
The dispute highlights major difficulties in balancing global health priorities. It is argued, reasonably, that with effective care and treatment, HIV/AIDS has become more of a manageable illness than the virtual death sentence it once was. A shift in funding priority thus would provide adequate funds to support non-AIDS health programs — for example, pneumonia or malaria prevention or prenatal and neonatal care — in a cost-effective manner.
The advances against HIV/AIDS have been remarkable. The reality, unfortunately, is that the epidemic has had widely varied impact in different countries. In hard-hit sub-Saharan Africa, a post-AIDS era is still far off. As UNAIDS officials point out, the influx of AIDS funds has been crucial to expanding often-rudimentary health-care systems, providing, among other things, laboratories, clinics and staff training for basic health-care services.
The concern is valid that HIV/AIDS is overshadowing equally debilitating health problems in developing countries. There's no denying the affliction commands celebrity attention, publicity and funding that a campaign, say, to provide latrines or combat tape-worm infection would not. The high priority is to forge a balance that does not turn global health funding decisions into a zero-sum game.
Get the full article here.
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