Rethinking HIV

The Blavatnik School of Government leads a project to identify the real economic costs of HIV in African countries and find strategies to meet them.

For those countries which have the biggest struggle with HIV, its impact is not just medical. It brings with it far-reaching and complex economic considerations – not only of how to pay for treatment and prevention, but also of lost productivity when those afflicted become unable to work.

The RethinkHIV project is run by a multidisciplinary consortium including researchers from Oxford (the Blavatnik School of Government and the Centre for the Study of African Economies), Harvard School of Public Health, Imperial College London, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Its purpose is to quantify the actual financial costs associated with the disease and to devise strategies for meeting them, communicating these directly to the governments involved to help them with appropriate policy formation. Within RethinkHIV, data from the different disciplines can be combined into sophisticated economic models, modifying the approach for each country according to prevalence of the disease, income level and main economic activity.

Leading the project is Professor Mthuli Ncube, Professor of Public Policy at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. An expert economic thinker on Africa and globally, Professor Ncube is able to draw on his experience as Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank Group. His extensive CV uniquely qualifies him for a role which combines highly sophisticated economic modelling with the ability to communicate the results in a comprehensible way to those who need them. He says: ‘It’s a very rich, multi-method, multidisciplinary study. But when we interact with governments in terms of policy messages, we are able to put all of it together – and have an impact.’

Professor Ncube himself, he explains, has been using game theory ‘to try to understand how donors and governments arrive at decisions of how to “fund” HIV. Because at the end of the day they are all involved in a game – donors are in a sense watching countries, and countries are watching donors as well.’ His aim in doing this is ‘to arrive at an optimal way of setting out funding formulas for donors and for how governments should contribute, looking then at how all of this also has an impact on the probability of contracting the disease. Because the more you spend, the more you reduce that probability. It is all inter-related.’

The consortium holds regular meetings and publishes its research. Professor Ncube notes that ‘each paper is accompanied by a policy brief, which summarises key points and policy messages for governments. Because you don’t expect ministers of finance or health to know all those equations – you just want to give them an answer to the problem.’

The Rush Foundation is the main supporter of RethinkHIV.

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