The Challenge
An estimated 34 million people are living with HIV around the world. Although significant progress has been made in fighting the epidemic, an estimated 2.5 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2011, while another 1.7 million died from the disease. Africa shoulders the brunt of the global AIDS burden—UNAIDS estimates that in 2009, 22.5 million people were living with HIV in Africa alone, and AIDS remains the major cause of death of women of reproductive age and adult men in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though prevention and treatment programs are expanding, the epidemic continues. While the cost of AIDS treatment is increasing, donor assistance for health is beginning to level off, and resources are becoming increasingly scarce. With limited budgets and a number of prevention and treatment options to choose from, donors must decide how to invest funds efficiently and effectively.
The Opportunity
While there are many advantages to the existing HIV treatment and prevention options, the high costs of sustaining treatment call for a strategy that emphasizes prevention. An AIDS vaccine would be the ultimate preventive measure, as vaccination could provide manageable and affordable protection against HIV infection for large numbers of people. The impact of an AIDS vaccine would be significant – estimates suggest that a vaccine of 50% efficacy given to just 30% of the population could avert 24% of new infections in the developing world between 2015 and 2030.[i]
Significant new funding, amounting to billions of dollars, could be required to develop such a vaccine. Would the epidemiological benefits, measured in terms of infections avoided, merit the additional funds required to create the AIDS vaccine?
Our Work
In summer 2011, the Rush Foundation asked the Copenhagen Consensus Center to commission a group of leading health academics to analyze HIV policy choices and identify the most cost-effective ways to tackle the pandemic across sub-Saharan Africa. In this context, they requested that R4D focus on assessing the cost-effectiveness of developing an AIDS vaccine.
The R4D team conducted an in-depth analysis of the costs and potential benefits of AIDS vaccine development. The resulting paper found that even using conservative assumptions, investment in an HIV vaccine is projected to have a high payoff.
On September 26, 2011, Senior Fellow Dean Jamison and Managing Director Robert Hecht presented the R4D paper to the Copenhagen Consensus Center’s expert panel of five distinguished economists, including three Nobel Laureates. The experts ranked AIDS vaccine research and development as the top AIDS intervention in which the global community should continue to invest.
The proceedings from the Copenhagen Consensus Center’s deliberations garnered substantial press coverage:
- VOA: Rethinking HIV from an economic viewpoint
- Time: Moneyball for HIV
- Aidsmap: expert panel picks “best buys” for HIV
- French Tribune
- The Huffington Post
To read each of the assessment papers, visit RethinkHIV.com.
[i] IAVI. (2009). Estimating the Impact of an AIDS Vaccine in Developing Countries. Policy brief #20. New York: IAVI.
