Integrating HIV prevention and treatment efforts into health systems

Results for Development advises and supports countries and development partners in their efforts to sustain funding and implementation of priority HIV interventions, while also integrating them into broader health systems.

The Challenge

Around the world, nearly 37 million people are living with HIV. The proliferation of antiretroviral therapy — around 20 million people take daily, life-sustaining medicines — has transformed the global HIV response. In many places, HIV is now managed more like a chronic disease than an emergency epidemic, creating new challenges and opportunities for providing long-term care to millions of patients.

As treatment provides people with longer, healthier and more productive lives, the nearly two million new infections per year add to the ever-growing burden of HIV on health-service delivery systems and government budgets. Only through the rapid scale-up of both treatment and prevention activities can countries meet the sustainable development goals’ call to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

Our Approach

R4D works closely with global and country change agents to mobilize resources for the HIV response, maximize efficiency in HIV spending, and reliably monitor HIV expenditure against health results. R4D also works with country partners to plan and manage the transition of externally funded HIV services. Transition from aid is particularly important because, in many countries, HIV programs are among the most “verticalized” (financed and run separately from other health services) and donor-dependent health sector activities.

R4D’s experts work with countries and development partners to:

Rigorously track and analyze HIV expenditure.
Examine the feasibility of integrating components of verticalized HIV programs into broader health financing systems, including national or social health insurance schemes.
Plan for donor transitions.
Assess HIV costs that fall outside of service delivery.
Inform global stakeholder dialogue on cultivating and maintaining healthy markets for key HIV commodities, including adult and pediatric antiretroviral therapies.
Identify opportunities to improve the efficiency of HIV spending, including through optimizing global procurement practices for HIV commodities.
Expand the global knowledge base on HIV-related health financing, economics and policy.

Photo ©Jon Rawlinson