Additional resource needs for viral hepatitis elimination through universal health coverage: projections in 67 low-income and middle-income countries, 2016-30.

BACKGROUND: The World Health Assembly calls for elimination of viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 (ie, -90% incidence and -65% mortality). However, WHO's 2017 cost projections to achieve health-related Sustainable Development Goals did not include the resources needed for hepatitis testing and treatment. We aimed to estimate the incremental commodity cost of adding scaled up interventions for testing and treatment of hepatitis to WHO's investment scenarios. METHODS: We added modelled costs for implementing WHO recommended hepatitis testing and treatment to the 2017 WHO cost projections. We quantified additional requirements for diagnostic tests, medicines, health workers' time, and programme support across 67 low-income and middle-income countries, from 2016-30. A progress scenario scaled up interventions and a more ambitious scenario was modelled to reach elimination by 2030. We used 2018 best available prices of diagnostics and generic medicines. We estimated total costs and the additional investment needed over the projection of the 2016 baseline cost. FINDINGS: The 67 countries considered included 230 million people living with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and 52 million people living with hepatitis C virus (HCV; 90% and 73% of the world's total, respectively). Under the progress scenario, 3250 million people (2400 million for HBV and 850 million for HCV) would be tested and 58·2 million people (24·1 million for HBV and 34·1 million for HCV) would be treated (total additional cost US$ 27·1 billion). Under the ambitious scenario, 11 631 million people (5502 million for HBV and 6129 million for HCV) would be tested and 93·8 million people (32·2 million for HBV and 61·6 million for HCV) would be treated (total additional cost $58·7 billion), averting 4·5 million premature deaths and leading to a gain of 51·5 million healthy life-years by 2030. However, if affordable HCV medicines remained inaccessible in 13 countries where medicine patents are protected, the additional cost of the ambitious scenario would increase to $118 billion. Hepatitis elimination would account for a 1·5% increase to the WHO ambitious health-care strengthening scenario costs, avert an additional 4·6% premature deaths, and add an additional 9·6% healthy life-years from 2016-30. INTERPRETATION: Access to affordable medicines in all countries will be key to reach hepatitis elimination. This study suggests that elimination is feasible in the context of universal health coverage. It points to commodities as key determinants for the overall price tag and to options for cost reduction strategies. FUNDING: WHO, United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unitaid.

Access to Treatment for Hepatitis B Virus Infection - Worldwide, 2016.

Worldwide, an estimated 257 million persons are living with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection (1). To achieve the World Health Organization (WHO) goals for elimination of HBV infection worldwide by 2030, defined by WHO as 90% reduction in incidence and 65% reduction in mortality, access to treatment will be crucial. WHO estimated the care cascade* for HBV infection, globally and by WHO Region. The patent and licensing status of entecavir and tenofovir, two WHO-recommended medicines for HBV treatment, were examined using the Medicines Patent Pool MedsPaL† database. The international price of tenofovir was estimated using WHO's global price reporting mechanism (GPRM), and for entecavir from a published study (2). In 2016, among the estimated 257 million persons infected with HBV worldwide, approximately 27 million (10.5%) were aware of their infection, an estimated 4.5 million (16.7%) of whom were on treatment. In 2017, all low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) could legally procure generic entecavir, and all but two LMICs could legally procure generic tenofovir. The median price of WHO-prequalified generic tenofovir on the international market fell from $208 per year in 2004 to $32 per year in 2016. In 2015, the lowest reported price of entecavir was $427 per year of treatment (2). Increased availability of generic antivirals effective in treating chronic HBV infection has likely improved access to treatment. Taking advantage of reductions in price of antivirals active against HBV infection could further increase access to treatment. Regular analysis of the hepatitis B treatment care cascade can assist in monitoring progress toward HBV elimination goals.

Improving health services for African migrants in China: A health diplomacy perspective.

Global health has become an increasingly prominent component of foreign policy in the last decade. The term health diplomacy has been used to describe this growing interface between foreign policy and global health, and it encompasses both the concept of using health to further foreign policy objectives as well as the idea that diplomatic tools can be helpful for attaining public health goals. The Chinese presence in Africa has grown in the last 15 years, generating increased interest in Sino-African relations. While much has been written in recent years about the Chinese presence in Africa, the growing numbers of Africans in China have attracted considerably less attention. Many are small-scale traders and might be expected to face many of the health challenges common among foreign migrants, but their health needs have been largely unrecognised. In this paper, we consider how a health diplomacy approach could be applied to African migrants in China, and the potential advantages and limitations of this strategy. We identify areas of overlap between public health, trade and foreign policy goals that can be emphasised to generate support for improved services for African migrants in China and to engage partners from a diversity of sectors.

Cost-effectiveness of integrated routine offering of prenatal HIV and syphilis screening in China.

BACKGROUND: In China, recent rises in syphilis and HIV cases have increased the focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission of these infections. We assess the health and economic outcomes of different strategies of prenatal HIV and syphilis screening from the local health department's perspective. METHODS: A Markov cohort decision analysis model was used to estimate the health and economic outcomes of pregnancy using disease prevalence and cost data from local sources and, if unavailable, from published literature. Adverse pregnancy outcomes included induced abortion, stillbirth, low birth weight, neonatal death, congenital syphilis in live-born infants, and perinatal HIV infection. We examined 4 screening strategies: no screening, screening for HIV only, for syphilis only, and for both HIV and syphilis. We estimated disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for each health outcome using life expectancies and infections for mothers and newborns. RESULTS: For a simulated cohort of 10,000 pregnant women (0.07% prevalence for HIV and 0.25% for syphilis; 10% of HIV-positives were coinfected with syphilis), the estimated costs per DALY prevented were as follows: syphilis-only, $168; HIV-and-syphilis, $359; and HIV-only, $5636. The estimated incremental cost-effectiveness ratio if an existing HIV-only strategy added syphilis screening (i.e., move from the HIV-only strategy to the HIV-and-syphilis strategy) was $140 per additional DALY prevented. CONCLUSIONS: Given the increasing prevalence of syphilis and HIV among pregnant women in China, prenatal HIV screening programs that also include syphilis screening are likely to be substantially more cost-effective than HIV screening alone and prevent many more adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Total HIV/AIDS expenditures in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan province in 2010: the first systematic evaluation of both health and non-health related HIV/AIDS expenditures in China.

OBJECTIVE: We assessed HIV/AIDS expenditures in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province, one of the highest prevalence regions in China, and describe funding sources and spending for different categories of HIV-related interventions and at-risk populations. METHODS: 2010 HIV/AIDS expenditures in Dehong Prefecture were evaluated based on UNAIDS' National AIDS Spending Assessment methodology. RESULTS: Nearly 93% of total expenditures for HIV/AIDS was contributed by public sources. Of total expenditures, 52.7% was allocated to treatment and care, 24.5% to program management and administration and 19.8% to prevention. Spending on treatment and care was primarily allocated to the treatment of opportunistic infections. Most (40.4%) prevention spending was concentrated on most-at-risk populations, injection drug users (IDUs), sex workers, and men who have sex with men (MSM), with 5.5% allocated to voluntary counseling and testing. Prevention funding allocated for MSM, partners of people living with HIV and prisoners and other confined populations was low compared to the disproportionate burden of HIV/AIDS in these populations. Overall, people living with HIV accounted for 57.57% of total expenditures, while most-at-risk populations accounted for only 7.99%. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated the applicability of NASA for tracking and assessing HIV expenditure in the context of China, it proved to be a useful tool in understanding national HIV/AIDS response from financial aspect, and to assess the extent to which HIV expenditure matches epidemic patterns. Limited funding for primary prevention and prevention for MSM, prisoners and partners of people living with HIV, signal that resource allocation to these key areas must be strengthened. Comprehensive analyses of regional and national funding strategies are needed to inform more equitable, effective and cost-effective HIV/AIDS resource allocation.

The integration of multiple HIV/AIDS projects into a coordinated national programme in China.

External financial support from developed countries is a major resource for any developing country's national AIDS programme. The influence of donors on the content and implementation of these programmes is thus inevitable. China is a large developing country that has received considerable international support for its HIV/AIDS programme. In the early stage of the response, each large HIV/AIDS project independently implemented their activities according to their project framework. When internationally funded projects were few and the quantity of domestic support was minimal, their independent implementation did not pose a problem. When many HIV/AIDS projects were simultaneously implemented in the same locations, problems emerged such as inconsistency and overlap in data collection. China has thus coordinated and integrated all large international and domestic HIV/AIDS projects into one national programme. The process of integration began slowly and initially consisted of unified data collection. Integration is now complete and encompasses the processes of project planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The process was facilitated by having a single coordinating body, cooperation from international agencies and financial commitment from the government. Some problems were encountered during this process, such as initial reluctance from health-care staff to allocate additional time to coordinate projects. This paper describes that process of integrating domestic and foreign HIV/AIDS projects and may serve as a useful example for other developing countries for management of scarce resources.

Adherence to first-line antiretroviral therapy affects non-virologic outcomes among patients on treatment for more than 12 months in Lusaka, Zambia.

BACKGROUND: High-level adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) is associated with favourable patient outcomes. In resource-constrained settings, however, there are few validated measures. We examined the correlation between clinical outcomes and the medication possession ratio (MPR), a pharmacy-based measure of adherence. METHODS: We analysed data from a large programmatic cohort across 18 primary care centres providing ART in Lusaka, Zambia. Patients were stratified into three categories based on MPR-calculated adherence over the first 12 months: optimal (> or =95%), suboptimal (80-94%) and poor (<80%). RESULTS: Overall, 27 115 treatment-naïve adults initiated and continued ART for > or =12 months: 17 060 (62.9%) demonstrated optimal adherence, 7682 (28.3%) had suboptimal adherence and 2373 (8.8%) had poor adherence. When compared with those with optimal adherence, post-12-month mortality risk was similar among patients with sub-optimal adherence [adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) = 1.0; 95% CI: 0.9-1.2] but higher in patients with poor adherence (AHR = 1.7; 95% CI: 1.4-2.2). Those <80% MPR also appeared to have an attenuated CD4 response at 18 months (185 cells/microl vs 217 cells/microl; P < 0.001), 24 months (213 cells/microl vs 246 cells/microl; P < 0.001), 30 months (226 cells/microl vs 261 cells/microl; P < 0.001) and 36 months (245 cells/microl vs 275 cells/microl; P < 0.01) when compared with those above this threshold. CONCLUSIONS: MPR was predictive of clinical outcomes and immunologic response in this large public sector antiretroviral treatment program. This marker may have a role in guiding programmatic monitoring and clinical care in resource-constrained settings.

Cost-effectiveness of HIV rescreening during late pregnancy to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission in South Africa and other resource-limited settings.

A decision analysis model, from a health care system perspective, was used to assess the cost-effectiveness of HIV rescreening during late pregnancy to prevent perinatal HIV transmission in South Africa, a country with high HIV prevalence and incidence among pregnant women. Because new HIV prenatal prophylactic and pediatric antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimens are becoming more widely available, the study was carried out with different combinations of the two. With an estimated HIV incidence during pregnancy of 2.3 per 100 person-years, HIV rescreening would prevent additional infant infections and result in net savings when zidovudine plus single-dose nevirapine or single-dose nevirapine is used for perinatal HIV prevention, and ART was available to treat perinatally HIV-infected children. The cost savings were robust over a wide range of parameter values when ART was available to treat perinatally HIV-infected children but were more sensitive to variations around the baseline when ART was not available. The minimum time interval between the initial and repeat screens would be from 3 to 18 weeks, depending on prophylactic and treatment regimens, for HIV rescreening to be cost saving. Overall, HIV rescreening late in pregnancy in high-prevalence, resource-limited settings such as South Africa would be a cost-effective strategy for reducing mother-to-child transmission.

Human immunodeficiency virus retesting during pregnancy: costs and effectiveness in preventing perinatal transmission.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the incremental societal costs and effectiveness of a second human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody test during the third trimester of pregnancy compared with no second test. METHODS: We used a decision tree in this cost-effectiveness analysis to model outcomes among pregnant women in high-risk communities and nationwide who received an initial, negative HIV antibody test during the first trimester. The main outcome measure was discounted costs per year of infant life saved. RESULTS: In high-risk communities with estimated HIV incidence of 6.2 per 1000 person-years, a second HIV test compared with no second test would detect 192 infections in women, prevent approximately 37 infant infections, and save 655 infant life-years per 100,000 women tested. Net savings would be 5.2 million US dollars. Applied to an estimated national incidence of.17 per 1000 person-years, a second test would detect 5.3 infections in women, prevent 1.3 infant infections, and save 23.3 infant life-years per 100,000 women tested. Net costs would be 1.06 million US dollars, or 45,708 US dollars for each year of infant life saved. A second test would result in net savings in populations with HIV incidence of 1.2 per 1000 person-years or higher. CONCLUSION: Health care providers serving women in communities with an HIV incidence of 1 per 1000 person-years or higher should strongly consider implementing a second voluntary universal HIV test during the third trimester. Providers serving lower-risk communities should pilot second testing to assess community-specific costs.