WHO Decides What is Fair? International HIV Treatment Guidelines, Social Value Judgements and Equitable Provision of Lifesaving Antiretroviral Therapy

Paul Revill, Miqdad Asaria, Andrew Phillips, Diana Gibb and Charles Gilks
Additional contact information
Andrew Phillips: Research Department of Infection and Population Health, University College London, London, UK
Diana Gibb: Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit, University College London, London, UK
Charles Gilks: School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Herston, Australia

No 099cherp, Working Papers from Centre for Health Economics, University of York

Abstract: The new 2013 WHO Consolidated Guidelines on the Use of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) make aspirational recommendations for ART delivery in low and middle income countries. Comprehensive assessments of available evidence were undertaken and the recommendations made are likely to improve individual health outcomes. However feasibility was downplayed, the Guidelines represent high-cost policy options not all of which are compatible with the core public health principles of decentralization; task-shifting; and a commitment to universality. Critically, their impact on equity and the population-level distribution of health outcomes were not fully considered. We analyze the likely distribution of health outcomes resulting from alternative ways of realising the 2013 Guidelines and assess practicality, feasibility and health attainment amongst different sections of the population in the context of financial and human resource constraints. Claim can be made that direct interpretation of the Guidelines follows a "human rights" based approach in seeking to provide individual patients with the best alternatives amongst those available on the basis of current evidence. However, there lies a basic conflict between this and "consequentialist" public health based approaches that provide more equal population-level outcomes. When determining how to respond to the 2013 Guidelines and fairly allocate scarce lifesaving resources, national policymakers must carefully consider the distribution of outcomes and the underpinning social value judgements required to inform policy choice. It is important to consider whose values should determine what is a just distribution of health outcomes. The WHO Guidelines committees are well placed to compile evidence on the costs and effects of health care alternatives. However, their mandate for making distributional social value judgements remains unclear.

Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2014-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.york.ac.uk/media/che/documents/papers/r ... V_Guidelines_ART.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

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:chy:respap:99cherp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Centre for Health Economics, University of York Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gill Forder ().