Over the past 25 years, AIDS has imposed a huge cost, in economic and social terms, on many countries, communities, and households around the world. At the same time, the price tag to respond fully and effectively in the areas of prevention, care and treatment, mitigation, critical changes in the underlying determinants (e.g., violence against women), and research has reached a staggering level, and is continuing to increase.

Faced with these rapidly mounting economic impacts and financial costs, developing and developed country governments, UN and multilateral agencies, philanthropic organizations, the private sector, and households are all being challenged to mobilize the needed financial resources, and to utilize them as efficiently as possible. While there has been a significant increase in AIDS-related expenditures over the past decade and much innovation in ways to approach AIDS financing, funding channels have also been severely strained by the demands of the epidemic. It remains unclear if/how we will be able control these costs and to pay for an effective and sustained response over the next two and a half decades.

In this context, the four main objectives of the aids 2031 Costs and Financing Project are to:

1. Estimate the long term costs of AIDS, given assumed trends in the epidemic and a range of prevention, treatment, and mitigation scenarios; and to explore how certain policy actions or other factors in the next few years, might significantly raise or lower those long-run costs.
2. Use existing knowledge of intervention and program cost-effectiveness in order to make recommendations in setting priorities for resource allocation for future AIDS prevention, treatment, and mitigation, given that future financial resources will inevitably be constrained.
3. Construct and evaluate scenarios for financing the global response to the AIDS epidemic between now and 2031, which take into account both existing spending patterns and the prospects for mobilizing resources from traditional and innovative sources, both domestic and external, public and private; and to assess those future financing scenarios for their feasibility, equity of burden sharing, and potential macro-economic, fiscal, and efficiency effects.
4. Conduct at least two country case studies that would allow us to apply at national level the global costing, priority-setting and financial mobilization tools we are developing, in order to assess the solidness and relevance of broader policy recommendations when applied in the national/local context.

Co-conveners of the Costs and Financing Project are Prof. Callisto Madavo of Georgetown University, and Drs. David de Ferranti and Robert Hecht of Results for Development Institute. For more information on this project, including presentations and project materials, please visit us at http://www.resultsfordevelopment.org/projects/aids2031-costs-and-financing-working-group.

aids2031 Costs and Financing working group members are:

• Dr. David Apuuli, Director General, Uganda AIDS Commission

• Dr. Jarbas Barbosa da Silva, Gerente de Area Vigilancia Sanitaria y Atención de las Enfermedades, Organización Panamericana de la Salud

• Mr. Paul Bekkers, former Dutch AIDS Ambassador

• Mr. Christoph Benn, Director of External Relations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria

• Dr. Alvaro Bermejo, Executive Director International AIDS Alliance

• Dr. Mark Blecher, Director Social Services National Treasury Cape Town, South Africa

• David Bloom, Chair, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard University

• Dai Ellis, Director, Drug Access Team, Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative

• Robert Go Deloitte, Touche Tohmatsu Global Industries Leader, Global Managing Director of the Life Sciences and Health Care, Global Health Delivery

• Dean Jamison, Professor, Global Health University of Washington, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

• Professor Li Ling, China Center for Economic Research, Peking University

• Mr. Mamadou Lamine Loum, Former Prime Minister of Senegal

• Dr. Katherine M. Marconi, Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

• Calum Miller, Team Leader International Poverty Reduction, HM Treasury

• Dr. A.K. Nandakumar, Senior Program Officer Global Health Delivery Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

• Dr. Agnes Soucat, Senior Health Economist, World Bank

• Louis‐Charles Viossat, Inspector General for Social Affairs, IGAS