PHA-Exch> World Bank Backs Anti-Aids Experiment.

[Claudio Schuftan]

.....no comments.
 Claudio

From: Ted Greiner tedgreiner at yahoo.com

"Thousands of people in Africa will be paid to
avoid unsafe sex,
under a groundbreaking World Bank-backed
experiment aimed at halting
the spread of Aids.
The $1.8 million trial - to be launched this year
- will counsel
3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural
Tanzania over three
years, paying them on condition that periodic
laboratory test results
prove they have not contracted sexually
transmitted infections. The
proposed payments of $45 equate to a quarter of
annual income for
some participants.
The program, jointly funded by the World Bank,
the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference
Bureau and the Spanish
Impact Evaluation Fund, marks an important step
in the fight to
tackle Aids, which claims 2 million lives a year.
...The Tanzanian
experiment is a big advance in efforts to test
public health ideas
more rigorously, with some participants placed in
a control arm not
offered payment in order to track the effects of
the program
precisely. ..." [The Financial Times (UK,
04/26/)/Factiva]
In a separate piece, FT also notes that "...Cash
today may be a more
powerful incentive than the risk of an unseen
killer disease many
years hence. ...The question should be: can this
plan really work?
It might. Such 'conditional cash transfer'
programs have become
popular in development circles since the success
of Mexico's Progresa
program, which paid parents if their children
attended school and
went to the health clinic. The approach has even
been imitated in New
York. ...The world of development policy needs
more dangerous ideas,
rigorously evaluated. This one is a long shot. It
should be supported
anyway." [The Financial Times (UK,
04/26/)/Factiva]
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