Relative response: Ranking country responses to HIV and AIDS

Health and Human Rights

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 105-119

  Desmond, Chris ^a   Lieberman, Evan ^b   Alban, Anita ^c   Ekström, Anna Mia ^d  

^a HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH   (United States)

^b PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c Health economist at EASE International   (Denmark)

^d KAROLINSKA UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANTI HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS AGENT;

ACCOUNTABILITY; ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME; COMPARATIVE STUDY; HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS; ORPHAN; RANKING; REGRESSION ANALYSIS;

ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME; ARTICLE; DEMOGRAPHY; DISEASE TRANSMISSION; HEALTH; HEALTH SERVICE; HUMAN; HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS INFECTION; HUMAN RIGHTS; ORPHANED CHILD; PREVALENCE; SCHOOL; SOCIOECONOMICS; STATISTICS; UNITED NATIONS; VERTICAL TRANSMISSION; ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME; HIV INFECTIONS; PREVENTION AND CONTROL; STATISTICS AND NUMERICAL DATA; SUPPLY AND DISTRIBUTION; TRANSMISSION;

ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME; ANTI-HIV AGENTS; CHILD, ORPHANED; HEALTH SERVICES NEEDS AND DEMAND; HIV INFECTIONS; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; INFECTIOUS DISEASE TRANSMISSION, VERTICAL; PREVALENCE; RESIDENCE CHARACTERISTICS; SCHOOLS; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; UNITED NATIONS; WORLD HEALTH; GLOBAL HEALTH;

ELAGATIS;

EID: 70449587200     PISSN: 10790969     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20460106     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. See, for example, the ranking of health systems in the World Health Organization, The World Health Report 2000: Health Systems: Improving Performance (Geneva: WHO, 2000). Available at http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/index.html.
2. UN, Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS (New York: UN, 2001).
3. UNAIDS, Progress Report of the Global Response to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic 2004 (Geneva: WHO, 2004); USAID, UNAIDS, WHO and The Policy Project, The Level of Effort in the National Response to HIV/AIDS: The AIDS Program Effort Index 2003 Round (Washington, D. C.: USAID, 2003).
4. AIDS Accountability International: http://www.aidsaccountability.org.
5. UNAIDS, Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic: A UNAIDS 10th Anniversary Special Edition (Geneva: WHO, 2006).
6. Archival UNAIDS internet data on the Comoros as of October 17, 2007 available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20071018175254/http://unaids.org/en/Regions_Countries/Countries/comoros.asp.
7. E. Lieberman, "Ethnic Politics, Risk, and Policy-Making: A Cross-National Statistical Analysis of Government Responses to HIV/AIDS," Comparative Political Studies 40/12 (2007), pp. 1407-1432;
8. N. Nattrass, "What Determines Cross-Country Access to Antiretroviral Treatment?" Development Policy Review 3 (2006), pp. 321-337.
9. For example, if on average, democratic countries tended to perform better, they would still appear as better performers in our analyses. In a working paper she shared with us, Nattrass (see note 7) has also been developing a country rating based on a regression-residual approach. However, the work we have seen focuses only on ARV treatment, it interprets residuals as "leadership," and incorporates a much longer list of control variables, including those that we have deliberately chosen to exclude. While we have opted for a different approach, hers provides a sensible alternative and it will be up to readers to evaluate the relative strengths and weak-nesses of the two.
10. WHO, UNAIDS & UNICEF, Towards Universal Access: Scaling up Priority HIV/AIDS Interventions in the Health Sector (Geneva: WHO, 2007).
11. UNAIDS (2006, see note 5).
12. WHO, World Health Report 2004: Changing History (Geneva: WHO, 2004).
13. WHO, WHO Database on Skilled Attendant at Delivery (Geneva: WHO, 2006). Available at: http://www.who.int//reproductive-health/global_monitor-ing/data.html.
14. E. Hertz, J. Herbert and J. Landon, "Social and Environmental Factors and Life Expectancy, Infant Mortality and Maternal Mortality Rates: Results of a Cross-National Comparison," Social Science and Medicine 39 (1994), pp. 105-114;
15. J. Robinson and H. Wharrad, "The Relationship Between Attendance at Birth and Maternal Mortality Rates: An Exploration of United Nations' Data Sets Including the Ratio of Physicians and Nurses to Population, GNP per capita and Female Literacy," Journal of Advanced Nursing 34 (2001), pp. 445-455; Lieberman (see note 7); Nattrass (see note 7).
16. Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Secretariat, World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2005). Updated population database is available at: http://esa.un.org/unpp/.
17. The World Bank Group, World Bank Development Indicators: Gross National Income per Capita 2007, Atlas Method and PPP (Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 2008), Available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNIPC.pdf.
18. Hertz et al. (see note 13); Robinson and Wharrad (see note 13).
19. UNAIDS (2006, see note 5); Lieberman (see note 7); Nattrass (see note 7).
20. WHO, UNAIDS & UNICEF (see note 9).
21. Demographic and Health Surveys. In: UNAIDS. Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic (see note 5).
22. STATA Version 8, Stata Corporation, Texas.
23. The nature of our analysis requires us to compare countries on a continuum, and yet certain countries had essentially zero service delivery, rendering them qualitatively different from the rest. As a result, countries that reported 1% or lower ARV or PMTCT coverage were excluded from the regression and included in the rankings as "under-achievers."
24. The annex is available online at: http://hhrjour-nal.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/relative-response-statistical-annex-hhr102.pdf.
25. The sensitivity analysis includes, among other things, dropping HIV prevalence so as not to hold higher prevalence countries to a higher standard, the inclusion of countries with very low coverage, and not taking the log of the dependent variable and so ranking based on absolute differences.