Equity in the use of antiretroviral treatment in the public health care system in urban South Africa

Susan Cleary, Sheetal Silal, Stephen Birch, Henri Carrara, Victoria Pillay-van Wyk, Thomas Rehle and Helen Schneider

Health Policy, 2011, vol. 99, issue 3, 261-266

Abstract: Objectives The scaling up of antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV-infected adults requires a sizeable investment of resources in the South African public health care system. It is important that these resources are used productively and in ways that reach those in need, irrespective of social status or personal characteristics. In this study we evaluate whether the distribution of ART services in the public system reflects the distribution of need among adults in the urban population.Methods Data from a 2008 national survey were used to estimate the distribution of socioeconomic status (SES) and sex in HIV-positive adults in urban areas. These findings were compared to SES and sex distributions in 635 ART users within 6 urban public ART facilities.Results Close to 40% of those with HIV are in the lowest SES quintile, while 67% are women. The distributions in users of ART are similar to these distributions in HIV-positive people.Conclusions Patterns of ART use in study settings correspond to patterns of HIV in the urban population at the national level. This suggests that the South African ART programme is on track to ensure equitable delivery of treatment services in urban settings.

Keywords: Antiretroviral; treatment; HIV/AIDS; Socioeconomic; inequalities; in; use; Health; care; access (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168-8510(10)00321-0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:99:y:2011:i:3:p:261-266

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().