Need for HIV/AIDS Expenditure Data

The amount of resources available to support HIV/AIDS programming has increased greatly because of resource obilization efforts made by global initiatives, national governments and local organizations. While this growth in funding has allowed significant progress to be made in strengthening HIV/AIDS programming efforts, the influx of funding has presented some challenges. For example it has exposed fragments in the healthcare system and overburdened financial management systems; it has also made budgeting and planning more difficult because of the difficulties in monitoring resources to see how investments are spent and ensure the delivery of well-coordinated and integrated programs and services.

To help policymakers make informed decisions, they require access to data on the financing of HIV/AIDS programs, as well as routine expenditure data to determine if funds are being spent as intended and are in line with national AIDS strategic plans. Further, expenditure data is critical to informing global discussions and decisions about the status of current efforts and estimated future resource needs for HIV/ AIDS programs. There are many policy purposes of expenditure data, as well. Expenditure data can be used to:

• Monitoring HIV/AIDS programs to determine if funds are being used as intended
• advocate for funding for specific HIV areas;
• inform gap estimations and resource allocation decisions;
• inform estimation of anticipated HIV resources and costs needed to meet HIV goals; and
inform legislation on key policy decisions

Therefore, gathering HIV/AIDS financial indicators to track resource use must be an integral component of a monitoring and evaluation strategy.

Two frameworks to measuring HIV/AIDS expenditures

Given the great need for tracking financial resources for HIV/AIDS, two frameworks have emerged to help countries measure HIV/AIDS expenditures. Both have benefits to helping policymakers make more informed decisions about HIV/AIDS programming: the UNAIDS sponsored National AIDS Spending Assessment (NASA) framework and the WHO-World Bank-USAIDendorsed National Health Accounts (NHA) framework. Together, both frameworks aim to serve the needs of HIV/AIDS and healthcare stakeholders.