For the past decade, global AIDS donors have responded to HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as an emergency and have mobilized health workers from weak and understaffed workforces. They must begin to address the long-term problems underlying the shortages and the effects of their efforts on the health workforce more broadly.
Billions of dollars have been allocated to fight HIV/AIDS in poor countries over the past decade, yet less than half of those requiring treatment receive it, and for every two people put on treatment, five more become infected. Donors have to do more with available funds. Now is the time to link funding decisions to performance.
Few people doubt that gender inequality influences the spread of HIV/AIDS, yet public health efforts tend to focus on changing individual behavior rather than addressing structural factors—social, economic, physical and political—that influence the spread and effects of HIV and AIDS. This brief shows how three of the biggest donors to global HIV/AIDS programs can go beyond their stated commitments to address gender inequality and more effectively combat HIV and AIDS.