[afro-nets] World Bank Backs Anti-Aids Experiment

["Claudio Schuftan" <cschuftan@phmovement.org>]

.....no comments.
 Claudio

"Thousands of people in Africa will be paid to avoid unsafe sex, under a groundbreaking World Bank-backed experiment aimed at halting the spread of Aids. The $1.8 million trial - to be launched this year - will counsel 3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural Tanzania over three years, paying them on condition that periodic laboratory test results prove they have not contracted sexually transmitted infections. The proposed payments of $45 equate to a quarter of annual income for some participants. The program, jointly funded by the World Bank, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference Bureau and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, marks an important step in the fight to tackle Aids, which claims 2 million lives a year. 

...The Tanzanian experiment is a big advance in efforts to test public health ideas more rigorously, with some participants placed in a control arm not offered payment in order to track the effects of the program precisely. ..." [The Financial Times (UK, 04/26/)/Factiva] In a separate piece, FT also notes that "...Cash today may be a more powerful incentive than the risk of an unseen killer disease many years hence. ...The question should be: can this plan really work? It might. Such 'conditional cash transfer' programs have become popular in development circles since the success of Mexico's Progresa program, which paid parents if their children attended school and went to the health clinic. The approach has even been imitated in New York. ...The world of development policy needs more dangerous ideas, rigorously evaluated. This one is a long shot. It should be supported anyway." [The Financial Times (UK,
04/26/)/Factiva]

--
Ted Greiner 
mailto:tedgreiner@yahoo.com