Over half trillion dollars spent on HIV/AIDS worldwide: Lancet

New York April 18 (IANS) More than half a trillion dollars have been spent on HIV/AIDS worldwide between 2000 and 2015 a comprehensive analysis of funding for the disease by the Lancet has revealed.

The study showed that the total health spending disaggregated by source into government spending out-of-pocket prepaid private and development assistance for health was $562.6 billion over the 16-year period.

While the annual spending peaked in 2013 with $49.7 billion in 2015 $48.9 billion was provided for the care treatment and prevention of the disease.

Governments were the largest source of spending on HIV/AIDS in 2015 contributing $29.8 billion or 61 per cent of total spending on HIV/AIDS.

Conversely prepaid private spending was the smallest making up only $1.4 billion of the 2015 total.

"This research is an important initial step toward global disease-specific resource tracking which makes new policy-relevant analyses possible including understanding the drivers of health spending growth " said Christopher Murray Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington-Seattle.

"We are quantifying spending gaps and evaluating the impact of expenditures."

Development assistance for health (DAH) funding from high-income nations to support health efforts in lower-income ones made up 0.5 per cent of total health spending globally in 2015; DAH totalled 30 per cent of all HIV/AIDS spending in 2015.

"Reliance on development assistance to fight HIV/AIDS in high-prevalence countries leaves them susceptible to fluctuations in the external resources available for HIV/AIDS " said Joseph Dieleman from the IHME.

"Nations HIV/AIDS programmes are at risk for gaps in support and unrealised investment opportunities."

For the study the team worked with a group of 256 researchers in 63 countries.

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