Care for AIDS patients in developing countries: a review.

As an ever increasing number of HIV-infected persons develop AIDS, treating the manifestations associated with HIV infection has become a new challenge to health sectors in developing countries. Given resource constraints of health systems before the AIDS epidemic, there is an urgent need to start examining ways in which health care can be delivered to the large number of AIDS patients, without infringing on other primary health care activities. This paper reviews current experience with AIDS patient care management in developing countries and determines some of the areas where further research is crucial. The main issues identified are: (1) that reliable data on standardized treatment schemes for AIDS patients are scarce; (2) that there is an urgent need for research on low-cost supportive treatment of AIDS patients, comparing costs and outcomes; (3) that outpatient and home-based care can be a valuable alternative to hospital-based care, but that cost-efficiency of these alternative treatment strategies should be examined more closely; and finally, that (4) the potential benefit of using HIV/AIDS patients to promote prevention of HIV transmission should be acknowledged.