Figure 5
Comparison of alternative strategies for allocating expenditures for a hypothetical HIV patient in East Africa. This figure shows a comparison of monitoring strategies for a patient newly diagnosed with HIV with a CD4 count of 350 cells/mm3. The right pair of bars shows a strategy that relies on routine viral load monitoring, whereas the left set of bars shows a strategy that relies more on clinical monitoring, and reallocates the money saved on less laboratory monitoring to fund earlier initiation of ARV. Even though both strategies incur the same lifetime expenditures, the strategy that employs less laboratory monitoring to enable earlier ARV initiation increases life expectancy by 1.5 quality-adjusted life years.