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A meta-analysis approach for estimating average unit costs for ART using pooled facility-level primary data from African countries
- Source :
- African Journal of AIDS Research; Vol 18, No 4 (2019)
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- National Inquiry Services Center (NISC), 2019.
-
Abstract
- Objective: To estimate facility-level average cost for ART services and explore unit cost variations using pooled facility-level cost estimates from four HIV empirical cost studies conducted in five African countries .Methods: Through a literature search we identified studies reporting facility-level costs for ART programmes. We requested the underlying data and standardised the disparate data sources to make them comparable. Subsequently, we estimated the annual cost per patient served and assessed the cost variation among facilities and other service delivery characteristics using descriptive statistics and meta-analysis. All costs were converted to 2017 US dollars ($).Results: We obtained and standardised data from four studies across five African countries and 139 facilities. The weighted average cost per patient on ART was $251 (95% CI: 193–308). On average, 46% of the mean unit cost correspond to antiretroviral (ARVs) costs, 31% to personnel costs, 20% other recurrent costs, and 2% to capital costs. We observed a lot of variation in unit cost and scale levels between countries. We also observed a negative relationship between ART unit cost and the number of patients served in a year.Conclusion: Our approach allowed us to explore unit cost variation across contexts by pooling ART costs from multiple sources. Our research provides an example of how to estimate costs based on heterogeneous sources reconciling methodological differences across studies and contributes by giving an example on how to estimate costs based on heterogeneous sources of data. Also, our study provides additional information on costs for funders, policy-makers, and decision-makers in the process of designing or scaling-up HIV interventions.Keywords: HIV, treatment, efficiency, cost variatio
- Subjects :
- HIV, treatment, efficiency, cost variatio
Cost estimate
Pooling
HIV Infections
Unit (housing)
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Virology
Statistics
Humans
Capital cost
030212 general & internal medicine
Unit cost
Average cost
030505 public health
Descriptive statistics
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Health Care Costs
General Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Anti-Retroviral Agents
Meta-analysis
Africa
Health Facilities
Business
0305 other medical science
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17279445 and 16085906
- Volume :
- 18
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- African Journal of AIDS Research
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....1d609a902e63855fe92104aa2a6f6673
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.2989/16085906.2019.1688362