Expanded Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy Coverage - A Powerful Strategy to Curb Progression to AIDS, Death and New Infections

Sustained combination of HIV prevention strategies is essential to curb the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The use of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) decreases morbidity and mortality, as well as HIV transmission, among treated individuals. The concept of ‘treatment as prevention’ is dependent on HAART’s ability to sustain HIV-1 RNA virological suppression at the individual and population levels, and has been demonstrated in studies evaluating transmission in mother-to-child, sero-discordant couples and large treated populations. The worldwide expansion of maximally effective antiretroviral drug regimens has been coupled with concerns regarding the magnitude of the financial investment required. However, HAART’s compounding effect on reduced morbidity, mortality and transmission makes the expansion of HAART coverage highly cost-averting. Building on a mathematical model that evaluated the impact of expanded HAART access on viral load in a Canadian setting, we demonstrate that an investment of CA$249 million over the lifetime of treated individuals would result in a net gain of CA$2.1 billion over 30 years. This provides a powerful economic incentive to rapidly scale up HAART access worldwide.