HIV and AIDS in South Asia : An Economic Development Risk

This book offers an original perspective on HIV and AIDS as a development issue in South Asia, a region with a heterogeneous epidemic and estimated national HIV prevalence rates of up to 0.5 percent. The analysis challenges the common perception of HIV and AIDS, which has been shaped to a large extent by analysis of HIV and AIDS in regions with much higher prevalence rates. The chapters, most of which were commissioned specifically for this volume, can be grouped in three broad themes - the epidemiology of HIV and prevention strategies (chapters one and two), economic and development impacts of HIV and AIDS (chapters three and four), and the implications of HIV and AIDS for the health sector (chapters five and six). Within each theme, one chapter provides a more general discussion of the respective issues in the region (chapters one, three, and five), and one chapter highlights aspects of the respective issue in one particular country (with chapter two dealing with HIV in Afghanistan, and chapters four and six discus sing aspects of the impact of or the response to HIV and AIDS in India). Regarding the broad development themes identified by this book, chapters one and two highlight the epidemiological risks. Chapter three surveys the intersection of HIV and AIDS and key development objectives, and is complemented by chapters four and five. The forward-looking discussion of the challenges of scaling up (chapter five) is complemented by an analysis of the costs of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in India (chapter six) and a cross-country analysis of access to treatment (in chapter three).