What's New

At present various tools are used to derive cost-related information on the HIV response in countries. These include tools to derive unit costs, estimate total resource needs, cost strategic or operational plans, and to optimize resource allocation, track expenditure and estimate cost effectiveness. There is a lack of information or understanding in many countries among national HIV program managers and planners about the respective use, comparability, and compatibility among different tools. Consultants have personal preferences based on familiarity. For The Global Fund, proposals with separate commodity based budgets have to be derived, and there are problems since the Technical Review Panel cannot compare costs across proposals derived through different methods. This note is intended as a short summary of the recent consultation to share immediately with partners to indicate meeting outcomes and action points while the extended meeting report is finalized.

• Evidence of large growing concentrated Indian sub-epidemics • National response had low prevention coverage of high risk groups (HRG) • Prevention for concentrated epidemics via HRG focus well known • Few successful examples globally • International advocacy about "prevention gap"

• Forecasting, budgeting, costing • Unit costing • Linkages • Costing procedures • Resource tracking • Targets • Cost effectiveness • Minimum package of services • Financial gap analysis

Presentation on Integrating Gender Perspectives and Programs into Costing of HIV Responses at the Expert Consultation on Costing HIV Responses in Asia – Pacific, 29 October 2010

It is important to develop harmonized guidance on the appropriate tools for costing the HIV response mainly because: a. There are costing tools better suited for certain purposes than for others b. Different Technical Support providers prefer using their own costing tools c. Costing tools of different donor agencies may conflict with those normally used by the govt. d. Each donor agency has its own costing guidelines, which may confuse some country programs e. Country capacity building in costing would be facilitated

This is a presentation on the Introduction to the Asian HIV/AIDS Resource Needs Estimation and Costing Model (The Asian Model). This was presented during the Expert Consultation on Costing HIV Responses in Asia-Pacific, 28-29 October 2010.

This is a presentation on the Marginal Budgeting for Bottlenecks (Sri Lanka Example). This was presented at the Amari Watergate Hotel on 27-29 October 2010.

What is the goal of scenario building in HIV? • To help decision makers understand the consequences of their actions and their impact on the HIV epidemic • To provide them the information (costs, infections averted, approaches needed, etc.) to make decisions with maximum effects

Presentation on Country Costing Needs or Whose Reality Counts? at UCC Thailand 28-29 October 2010

- To share our economic analysis of Avahan and costing methods on a technical level - To disseminate the results of this effort (STI BMJ Published article) and also preliminary aggregated analysis for 4 years - To discuss how our work could be shared with to inform evaluation data needs