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India’s initiative to provide structured antiretroviral therapy has raised hope among people living with HIV/AIDS to lead a better productive life.
However provision of ART has significant financial implications.
This paper attempts to estimate the unit cost of providing first line ART in India and using this estimate ascertain the financial requirements of public funded ART programme in India over a period of 5 years under two different scenarios.
The cost estimates works out to be Rs. 911 per patient-month with provision of first line therapy only.
It is estimated that over the period of 5 years, 250 ART centres will have to be established in India among high risk districts and these centres will act as a ‘hub’ for rest of the districts.
Assuming that the programme will set up its own testing and ART centres, a budgetary provision of Rs. 12016 million will be required to put 3 lakh people under ART by end of five year.
On an alternate sc enario, assuming that the programme will outsource the key monitoring facilities to the existing private set up, a budgetary provision of Rs. 10249 million only will be required to cover the same population.
Considering the cost difference, it is argued that the programme can put in place an effective public private partnership mechanism in implementation of high value items like provision of ART in countries like India.
