Value for Money in Donor HIV Funding

Countries with the highest burden of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease are heavily reliant on donor funding from such sources as the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for their HIV programs. In recent years, commitments from these organizations have flattened while demand for HIV/AIDS care continues to rise. To meet the continued need for more HIV services in developing countries, existing resources need to be better leveraged, i.e., to provide improved value for the money. This article examines options for improving value for money in HIV funding by using a case study that focuses on the two largest funders, PEPFAR and the Global Fund, with funding for antiretroviral therapy (ART) as its leading example. The authors' assessment of available input and output data suggests that current spending allocations across direct and indirect services are not based on increasing value for money. The authors recommend that expenditure data for PEPFAR be made available to the public in a transparent fashion on an annual basis in a usable format and that the Global Fund make its data accessible for each program funded. They find that program output indicators to track indirect services are incomplete and need to be further developed. The trade-off between providing current services and providing future ones needs to be stated clearly, and funding decisions made accordingly. Finally, given projections that funding for HIV will likely not increase, particularly for low-income countries facing the highest HIV burden, an explicit emphasis on improving value for money by finding ways to better leverage existing monies is imperative.