World Bank report calls for increased HIV prevention efforts in Africa

In a report published last week, the World Bank "called on African governments and international donors to increase efforts to prevent new HIV infections in order to control treatment costs," VOA News reports. "One of the report's co-authors, Markus Haacker, said countries facing the highest burden are often not those with the highest infection rate, but rather low-income countries that lack the resources to keep pace with each new infection," VOA notes.

"The World Bank says the report should encourage the search for long-term funding solutions, while also getting more out of current programs," VOA writes, adding, "It recommends intensifying prevention efforts, using regional solutions to bring down costs, strengthening public-private partnerships and improving the use of data on which methods are most effective" (3/19). "But while the World Bank calls for significantly better HIV prevention efforts, it does not propose specific ways to do that," VOA writes in a separate article, noting co-author Elizabeth Lule, the World Bank's acting director for regional integration in Africa, said, "There isn't any HIV strategy that works effectively everywhere. Countries have to understand and know their epidemic" (DeCapua, 3/16).