HIV Prevention Saved Up
to 1.5 Million Lives in U.S.
Excerpt By Alison McCook, Reuter's Health

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Efforts to prevent new HIV infections may have saved between 204,000 and more than 1.5 million lives in the US since the 1980s, according to new estimates.

Based on the total amount spent on HIV-prevention efforts, study author Dr. David R. Holtgrave of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, found that between $6,400 and $49,700 was spent on preventing each new infection. This cost is considerably less than the amount of money needed to treat one HIV-infected patient over his or her lifetime, Holtgrave notes, which currently runs up to $195,000.

Holtgrave told Reuters Health that the number of new infections in the US has now plateaued at 40,000 each year. "I would like to see more prevention efforts," he said. "We have prevented a lot of new infections in the US. And now we have to go from the 40,000 level, and find a way to get that even further," he added.

Holtgrave calculated several scenarios to predict how many people would have become infected if no effort had been made to prevent HIV. He looked at trends after the number of new infections peaked in the mid-1980s at 161,000 each year.

From the first to the last scenarios, Holtgrave estimates that 204,000 to 1,585,000 lives, have been saved by HIV prevention efforts.

According to the report, an estimated $10.1 billion has been spent on HIV-prevention efforts in the US, from sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, other federal programs, and state and private contributions.

Dividing this total cost by the number of people potentially saved from becoming infected with HIV, Holtgrave proposes that the country spent between $6,400 and $49,700 to prevent each new infection--much less than the cost of caring for an infected patient.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Holtgrave said that he believed the most effective prevention efforts have been those that involved community leaders, who can emphasize preventive messages in their own communities. In addition, small group counseling, which brings a handful of people together to discuss HIV prevention, has likely contributed a great deal to preventing new infections, Holtgrave added.

"Even though we seem to have flattened out to 40,000 new infections per year in the US, that means we have work yet to do, but it doesn't mean our efforts have failed," he said.

SOURCE: AIDS 2002;16:2347-2349.

Reference Source 89

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