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Background: User fees are a common feature of health system financing in low and middle-income countries. In the context of universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment and care, the advantages of user fees for funding at country and local level should be balanced with their clinical and public health impact. Methods: We reviewed the literature on user fees and the impact of user fees on HIV/ AIDS service delivery. Results: Empirical evidence gathered since the 1980s shows that sustainability, efficiency and equity challenges faced by health systems have persisted with and have often been exacerbated by the introduction of user fees. The evidence on HIV/AIDS suggests that free care at the point of service fosters uptake and helps to extend access for the poorest users. User fees are currently the main barrier to adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). Their abolition is associated with better virological results and increased survival. Such abolition should be carried out in parallel with the implementation of financing mechanisms, such as prepayment and risk pooling, which are able to gather funds from the sectors of the population who are able to pay for healthcare and to promote equity towards the poorest. Conclusion: WHO has included free access to HIV/AIDS treatment at the point of service delivery as a component of its public health approach for reaching universal access. Implementation of free HIV/AIDS care should, however, be linked to efforts to strengthen healthcare systems, ensure long-term sustainability of funding and monitor equity of access to care.

WHO has proposed a public-health approach to antiretroviral therapy (ART) to enable scaling-up access to treatment for HIV-positive people in developing countries, recognising that the western model of specialist physician management and advanced laboratory monitoring is not feasible in resource-poor settings. In this approach, standardised simplified treatment protocols and decentralised service delivery enable treatment to be delivered to large numbers of HIV-positive adults and children through the public and private sector. Simplified tools and approaches to clinical decision-making, centred on the "four Ss"--when to: start drug treatment; substitute for toxicity; switch after treatment failure; and stop--enable lower level health-care workers to deliver care. Simple limited formularies have driven large-scale production of fixed-dose combinations for first-line treatment for adults and lowered prices, but to ensure access to ART in the poorest countries, the care and drugs should be given free at point of service delivery. Population-based surveillance for acquired and transmitted resistance is needed to address concerns that switching regimens on the basis of clinical criteria for failure alone could lead to widespread emergence of drug-resistant virus strains. The integrated management of adult or childhood illness (IMAI/IMCI) facilitates decentralised implementation that is integrated within existing health systems. Simplified operational guidelines, tools, and training materials enable clinical teams in primary-care and second-level facilities to deliver HIV prevention, HIV care, and ART, and to use a standardised patient-tracking system.

Evidently, funding malaria control during the last ten years has been one of the most beneficial health investments with great achievements in Africa. However the ongoing predicament is that the results were mostly achieved with external funds. With the current financial crisis, commitment for malaria funding by donors is uncertain and, this represents a major threat for sustaining gains in malaria control and elimination. As we move into the next decade, this funding shortage represents also a window of opportunity for African countries to use all their potential and invest more in health.

In 2007 an estimated 33 million people were living with HIV; 67% resided in sub-Saharan Africa, with 35% in eight countries alone. In 2007, there were about 1.4 million HIV-positive tuberculosis cases. Globally, approximately 4 million people had been given highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) by the end of 2008, but in 2007, an estimated 6.7 million were still in need of HAART and 2.7 million more became infected with HIV. Although there has been unprecedented investment in confronting HIV/AIDS - the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimates $13.8 billion was spent in 2008 - a key challenge is how to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic given limited and potentially shrinking resources. Economic disparities may further exacerbate human rights issues and widen the increasingly divergent approaches to HIV prevention, care and treatment. HIV transmission only occurs from people with HIV, and viral load is the single greatest risk factor for all modes of transmission. HAART can lower viral load to nearly undetectable levels. Prevention of mother to child transmission offers proof of the concept of HAART interrupting transmission, and observational studies and previous modelling work support using HAART for prevention. Although knowing one's HIV status is key for prevention efforts, it is not known with certainty when to start HAART. Building on previous modelling work, we used an HIV/AIDS epidemic of South African intensity to explore the impact of testing all adults annually and starting persons on HAART immediately after they are diagnosed as HIV positive. This theoretical strategy would reduce annual HIV incidence and mortality to less than one case per 1000 people within 10 years and it would reduce the prevalence of HIV to less than 1% within 50 years. To explore HAART as a prevention strategy, we recommend further discussions to explore human rights and ethical considerations, clarify research priorities and review feasibility and acceptability issues.