Is investing prevention for positive cost effective versus prevention for negative?

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 21 Jan 2005 10:38 PST

I don't understand the question. "Prevention for negative"??? Why
would you need to prevent people from being HIV-negative? Do you mean
"Is it more cost-effective to prevent the spread of HIV, or to treat
those who are HIV-positive?"

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Clarification of Question by markanthonymolina-ga on 21 Jan 2005 12:15 PST

Within the context of diminishing resources in HIV/AIDS, there has
been a debate of where to invest HIV Prevention funds. Service
providers and care givers of HIV+ clients are fighting to get a slice
of the limited funding to do more prevention education work for HIV+,
e.g, to educate their client more in terms of non co-infection to
their neg partners, prevention of being infected with another strain
of HIV, etc. (There are many articles that talk about "Prevention for
HIV+). Should the prevention aspect be integrated into the care and
treatment funding? Should the government redirect the vertical
programming to a "one-stop shop model or approach?

So I was trying to explore more on the cost effectivess of investing
this area versus taking care of the general negative population by
putting more money for Prevention for Neg.  I hope the question is
clear to you now? Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 21 Jan 2005 12:21 PST

I'm still not sure that I get what you're after. Is it something like
"Is it more cost-effective to teach HIV-positive people how not to
spread the virus, or to teach HIV-negative people how not to contract
the virus?"

Or to put in another way ...

Is not investing prevention for negative cost effective versus
prevention for positive?