Summaryobjectives To document how out-of-pocket health expenditure can lead to debt in a poor rural area in Cambodia.methods After a dengue epidemic, 72 households with a dengue patient were interviewed to document health-seeking behaviour, out-of-pocket expenditure, and how they financed such expenditure. One year later, a follow-up visit investigated how the 26 households with an initial debt had coped with it.

BackgroundGlobal Health Initiatives (GHIs), aiming at reducing the impact of specific diseases such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), have flourished since 2000. Amongst these, PEPFAR and GFATM have provided a substantial amount of funding to countries affected by HIV, predominantly for delivery of antiretroviral therapy (ARV) and prevention strategies. Since the need for additional human resources for health (HRH) was not initially considered by GHIs, countries, to allow ARV scale-up, implemented short-term HRH strategies, adapted to GHI-funding conditionality. Such strategies differed from one country to another and slowly evolved to long-term HRH policies. The processes and content of HRH policy shifts in 5 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were examined.MethodsA multi-country study was conducted from 2007 to 2011 in 5 countries (Angola, Burundi, Lesotho, Mozambique and South Africa), to assess the impact of GHIs on the health system, using a mixed methods design. This paper focuses on the impact of GFATM and PEPFAR on HRH policies. Qualitative data consisted of semi-structured interviews undertaken at national and sub-national levels and analysis of secondary data from national reports. Data were analysed in order to extract countries’ responses to HRH challenges posed by implementation of HIV-related activities. Common themes across the 5 countries were selected and compared in light of each country context.ResultsIn all countries successful ARV roll-out was observed, despite HRH shortages. This was a result of mostly short-term emergency response by GHI-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and to a lesser extent by governments, consisting of using and increasing available HRH for HIV tasks. As challenges and limits of short-term HRH strategies were revealed and HIV became a chronic disease, the 5 countries slowly implemented mid to long-term HRH strategies, such as formalisation of pilot initiatives, increase in HRH production and mitigation of internal migration of HRH, sometimes in collaboration with GHIs.ConclusionSustainable HRH strengthening is a complex process, depending mostly on HRH production and retention factors, these factors being country-specific. GHIs could assist in these strategies, provided that they are flexible enough to incorporate country-specific needs in terms of funding, that they coordinate at global-level and minimise conditionality for countries.

This editorial was published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization [© 2013 Bulletin of the World Health Organization] and the definite version is available at: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/91/1/12-115808/en

Financial access to HIV care and treatment can be difficult for many people in China, where the government provides free antiretroviral drugs but does not cover the cost of other medically necessary components, such as lab tests and drugs for opportunistic infections. This article estimates out-of-pocket costs for treatment and care that a person living with HIV/AIDS in China might face over the course of one year. Data comes from two treatment projects run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Nanning, Guangxi Province and Xiangfan, Hubei Province. Based on the national treatment guidelines, we estimated costs for seven different patient profiles ranging from WHO Clinical Stages I through IV. We found that patients face significant financial barriers to even qualify for the free ARV program. For those who do, HIV care and treatment can be a catastrophic health expenditure, with cumulative patient contributions ranging from approximately US$200-3939/year in Nanning and US$13-1179/year in Xiangfan, depending on the patient's clinical stage of HIV infection. In Nanning, these expenses translate as up to 340% of an urban resident's annual income or 1200% for rural residents; in Xiangfan, expenses rise to 116% of annual income for city dwellers and 295% in rural areas. While providing ARV drugs free of charge is an important step, the costs of other components of care constitute important financial barriers that may exclude patients from accessing appropriate care. Such barriers can also lead to undesirable outcomes in the future, such as impoverishment of AIDS-affected households, higher ARV drug-resistance rates and greater need for complex, expensive second-line antiretroviral drugs.

In many sub-Saharan countries, the health workforce shortage has been a major constraint in the scale-up of antiretroviral treatment. This human resource crisis has led to profound adjustments of the antiretroviral treatment care delivery model in several countries in the region. It also inspired some governments to take swift measures to substantially increase human resources capacity. This article draws on the experience of Malawi and Ethiopia, which have been able to successfully increase their health workforce over a relatively short period, allowing scaling up of antiretroviral treatment. Additional international HIV funding and strong political commitment made possible this exceptional response. Both countries implemented a combination of measures to tackle the human resource crisis: the delegation of medical and administrative tasks to lower health cadres and lay workers, the introduction of new health cadres, the reinforcement of pre-service training, and improving health staff remuneration. In particular, the involvement of community and lay health workers in HIV-related service delivery substantially increased the health workforce. The involvement of lay cadres has important long-term implications. To sustain results, continued political commitment, ongoing training and supervision to maintain quality of care, and strategies to avoid attrition among lay cadres will be essential. Although task shifting and involvement of lay cadres allowed bridging of the human resource gap in a short time, other strategies have to be considered simultaneously, and all interventions must be maintained over a longer period to yield results.