Experts discuss treatment as prevention at USAID-, World Bank-sponsored debate

In this post in the Center for Global Development's "Global Health Policy" blog, Amanda Glassman, director of Global Health Policy and a research fellow at the center, reports on last week's USAID- and World Bank-sponsored debate on treatment as prevention, "where debaters were asked to support or oppose the proposition that countries should spend the majority of flat or declining HIV prevention budgets on 'treatment as prevention,' building off the results of the HPTN 052 study which found a relative reduction of 89 percent in the total number of HIV-1 transmissions resulting from the early initiation of antiretroviral therapy [ART]." She writes, "While the debate itself focused mostly on the scientific merits or demerits of an early ART approach, the discussion suggested that we aspire to a different, better model of resource allocation, one that could incorporate health goals as well as economic, scientific and ethical considerations" (11/11).