[afro-nets] PMTCT - Costing the service in 4 sites in South Africa

[Candy Day <candy@hst.org.za>]

PMTCT - Costing the service in 4 sites in South Africa
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The Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission: Costing the
Service in Four Sites in South Africa

http://www.hst.org.za/publications/622

The above research report has just been published by the Health
Systems Trust and is available for download in PDF format from
the HST web site (53 pp. 593 kB) at:
http://www.hst.org.za/uploads/files/PMTCT_Costing.pdf

Written by:
Chris Desmond, Lucinda Franklin and Malcolm Steinberg of HEARD
With contributions from: David McCoy and Martin Hensher

Introduction:
The maturity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa has
brought competing agendas for prevention and impact mitigation
to the table. Given the country's resource constraints it is im-
perative that any interventions are thoroughly assessed for
their efficacy, costs and benefits.

The challenge to succeed with primary prevention of new infec-
tions remains the key long-term solution to the epidemic. Many
also believe that a PMTCT programme provides a boost to other
HIV/AIDS prevention and care and support programmes. For exam-
ple, PMTCT programmes help identify HIV-positive women, their
partners and their HIV infected children for care and support
interventions. By promoting VCT and disclosure of HIV status,
they can act as a vanguard for the de-stigmatisation of the dis-
ease.

Ensuring the availability of resources for delivering this in-
tervention in a cost-effective and sustained manner remains a
challenge. This report contributes to this by providing an as-
sessment of the cost side of this equation. This research is
part of a larger evaluation of the pilot PMTCT programme in
South Africa, and has been commissioned by the Health Systems
Trust on behalf of the Department of Health.

The specific objectives of the research were to:

* Undertake a costing exercise of the national PMTCT protocol in
   four purposively selected national PMTCT pilot sites;
* Assess sources of funding for the PMTCT intervention;
* Provide a range of costing data for informing the funding re-
   quirements of a national roll out of the PMTCT programme;
* Provide a range of costing data that can be used for policy,
   planning and management purposes.

Data from this research were fed back to the Directorates of Fi-
nancing and HIV/AIDS as soon as they became available at the end
of 2002. Some of these data have already been used to inform
government plans and budgets. This report is now being released
to the broader public in order to help raise general awareness
about the value and limitations of costing studies, and also be-
cause some of the findings have on-going relevance to current
PMTCT services and provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) on
a large scale.

--
Other PMTCT publications available are listed here:
http://www.hst.org.za/category/124

Regards,

Candy Day
HealthLink, a programme of Health Systems Trust
Tel 31-307-2954
Fax 31-304-0775
mailto:candy@hst.org.za
http://www.hst.org.za