The world has made great strides towardending AIDS. Yet the deadly disease remains a criticaldevelopment challenge for poor countries. Sub-SaharanAfrica, which has only 12 percent of the global population,is home to about 68 percent of all people living with HIV.Improving rates of HIV testing in order to identify andcounsel infected people is necessary for haltingtransmission of the virus and ensuring that people who areinfected can get treated. The challenge is how to improverates of testing, especially among couples where one partneris infected and either doesn t know or hasn t told thepartner. Increasingly, pay-for-performance is beingconsidered as an option for improving health care forpregnant women and children. Development experts andpolicymakers are interested in whether bonus payments canwork in other areas of health care, such as improving therate of HIV testing and treatment, especially in couples.evaluation found that the payments increased the likelihoodthat people who were part of a couple would get tested,showing that pay-for-performance could be a route forimproving testing (and thus making available information onhow to prevent HIV transmission) among those who face riskof infection from their partner. The results areparticularly important for Sub-Saharan Africa, whereaccording to 2009 World Health Organization data, nearly 80percent of HIV-infected adults are unaware of their HIVstatus, and more than 90 percent don t know if theirpartners are infected.
PDF
download
878987797
028-85220240
