Foreign Aid and HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean: Should We Adjust the Degree of Response?

This paper estimates the effects of foreign aid on Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevalence in a sample of 27 Latin American and Caribbean countries during 1995–2013 and advocates for stronger sentinel surveillance to monitor the stability of the epidemic in the region. Surges in global HIV funding have improved access to health care and antiretroviral therapy, leading to gains in life expectancy. HIV is a prime cause of death and disability in resource-poor settings. It declines with more global funding for health, yet its pathway is random. The net impact of foreign aid on health is unknown due to poor surveillance. HIV’s unsystematic nature requires better metrics arising from global aid data to calibrate the degree of response in the region. A dynamic panel-data model with robust standard errors was used to determine if changes in HIV were associated with changes in foreign aid for health in the sample but the positive association was not statistically significant. Better data from local epidemics is needed to reveal population- and group-specific trends.