The Price of Prevention: Cost Effectiveness of Biomedical HIV Prevention Strategies in South Africa.

Background: South Africa has the highest global burden of human immunodefciency virus [HIV]. The study compared the cost-effectiveness of individual and combination HIV preventive strategies against the current rollout of ART and possible ART scale-up.

Methods: Adolescents attending South African schools in 2012 were included in the semi-Markov running annual cycles. The ART and HIV counseling and testing program [comparator] was weighed against the interventions [viz. HIV vaccine, a dual vaccine strategy [HIV and HPV vaccines], oral pre-exposure prophylaxis [PrEP] and voluntary medical male circumcision [VMMC]; and various combinations thereof. Quality-adjusted life years [QALY] determined changes in HIV associated mortality and infections averted. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analysis determined parameter uncertainty. Discount rates of 3% with a lifetime horizon [70 years] were applied.

Results: Dual vaccination was highly cost-effective strategy [US$ 7 per QALY gained] and averted 29% of new HIV infections. VMMC [US$ 30 per QALY gained] proved more cost-effective than HIV vaccination alone [US$ 93 per QALY gained], though VMMC averted 6% more new infections than the HIV vaccine when considered among male participants. PrEP interventions were the least cost-effective with pharmaceutical and human resource spending driving the costs. Combined dual vaccination and VMMC strategies were a dominant intervention. Strategies involving PrEP were the least cost-effective.

Conclusion: VMMC, HIV vaccination and dual vaccination strategies were more cost-effective than any PrEP strategies. A multi-intervention biomedical approach could avert considerable new HIV infections and present a cost-effective use of resources; particularly where large scale multi-interventional randomized controlled trials are absent.