Despite India’s enormous population, it would be cost-effective to fight its growing AIDS epidemic by testing all 800 million sexually active adults in the country every five years and treating all those infected, a new statistical study has concluded.
The study, published online in May by PLoS One, notes that testing there costs only $3.33, and that first-line antiretroviral therapy is about $100 a year. The World Health Organization measure for a medical intervention’s cost-effectiveness is whether it saves one year of life for less than three times the per capita gross domestic product. In India’s case, that is $3,900 per year-of-life saved.
Testing as often as every year would be cost-effective in high-risk groups like drug injectors, gay and bisexual men, female prostitutes, migrants and visitors to S.T.D. clinics, the study found. Treatment makes people with H.I.V. less infectious, so early treatment would prevent the virus’s spread to others.
Donald G. McNeil Jr.
The New York Times
Read More