IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/conchp/978-3-7908-2419-3_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Challenge: A Transnational Response to HIV/AIDS

In: AIDS and Aid

Author

Listed:
  • Diana Sonntag

    (Vienna University of Economics and Business Institute for Social Policy)

Abstract

Since the appearance of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) more than 25 years ago the virus has been spread all over the world, but unevenly. The concentration of HIV in developing countries is worrying because their governments are often reluctant to intervene. Those governments are faced with other important demands as addressing malnutrition which are competitive for scarce financial resources. Hence, their willingness to establish anti-AIDS programmes is little. The epidemiological, political and social consequences do not only become visible within developing countries, but also globally. This cross-country health interdependency has to be reflected in a worldwide response because isolated interventions do not seem to be effective in the long run. The concept of international public goods was suggested in the academic literature on AIDS to solve international concerns. Several governments and international organisations like the World Bank or the WHO have followed this recommendation by setting this topic on their agendas (World Bank 2000, pp. 2, 6; Engqvist 2001, p. 3). The WHO and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), for example, refer to the provision of HIV prevention as a classic public good intervention in their annual report about the AIDS epidemic in 2005 (UNAIDS and WHO 2005, p. 7). However, it seems that the provision of international public goods does not meet the requirement to result in effective policy responses in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Cross-country benefit and cost spillovers and the resulting difficulties in determining the corresponding prices imply that the control of HIV/AIDS tends to be suboptimal. In contrast to national health-promoting public goods as maintaining hospitals, there is no government that can intervene either by using taxes for financing or by direct provision (Smith et al. 2004, p. 272). This chapter shows why a consideration of international public goods with respect to the global AIDS epidemic is still justified.

Suggested Citation

  • Diana Sonntag, 2010. "The Challenge: A Transnational Response to HIV/AIDS," Contributions to Economics, in: AIDS and Aid, chapter 0, pages 5-33, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:conchp:978-3-7908-2419-3_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-7908-2419-3_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:conchp:978-3-7908-2419-3_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.