These therapies are not a cure and they are still experimental. Not everyone responds to them. The conditions under which they can be effective have not been established, even in industrialized countries where the necessary monitoring and diagnostic services are more likely to be available. While the cost of these treatments is likely to decline over time, governments need to be aware of the potentially large impact that expensive therapies can have on health spending. The very high cost of these treatments and their impact on the availability of resources for other health conditions make it even more imperative that governments maintain strong prevention programs and protect the resources devoted to them.
Countries differ widely in the extent to which governments finance curative health care.
The higher is the subsidy that is provided to health care, the larger will be the impact of an AIDS epidemic on government health spending. Regardless of the level of subsidy to health care in a particular country, for reasons of compassion and fairness, governments must ensure that AIDS patients have the same access to treatment as others with equally severe conditions and that AIDS patients are not subjected to discrimination. But to be fair, neither should AIDS patients get better access to treatment than others, as is the case in several countries.