The moral and fiscal implications of antiretroviral therapies for HIV in Africa

Paul Collier and Olivier Sterck

Oxford Economic Papers, 2018, vol. 70, issue 2, 353-374

Abstract: Thanks to antiretroviral therapies (ART), people living with HIV (PLHIV) can now have a near-normal life at a cost of a few hundred dollars per year. We postulate that given this new low cost of maintaining lives, there is a moral duty to rescue those who are infected. This obligation creates a financial quasi-liability which for some African countries is comparable to their debt-to-GDP ratios. We construct a model to show that expenditure on prevention can pre-empt some of these liabilities. However, even with optimal prevention the quasi-liability is likely to remain too high to be affordable for a significant number of African countries. Extending the model to two players, we show that if the international community accepts part of the quasi-liability, as it does, it should finance a broadly equal share of prevention and treatment of future infections to mitigate moral hazard and avoid sub-optimal investment in prevention.

JEL-codes: E61 I15 I18 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: The Moral and Fiscal Implications of Anti-Retroviral Therapies for HIV in Africa (2015)
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