Prevention and medication of HIV/AIDS: the case of Botswana

In this paper we developed a mathematical model which allows estimating and projecting the effects of prevention and treatment programs on the total population size, HIV-induced deaths, and life expectancies. Considering only the female population we project the changes of the demographic developments and the situation of HIV/AIDS for Botswana up to 2060. Our mathematical model is used to project the female population development considering their age-structure. Treatment programs are included through selecting a price for medication (or giving it for free). Prevention programs consist of two parts: school-based programs which try to change risky behavior and instantaneous prevention (e.g., free condoms) which has only a short-time effect on the infection risk. The main conclusions drawn from our results are that prevention-only programs always yield the fastest decrease in HIV/AIDS prevalence. Adding a medication program reduces the efficiency of the prevention interventions regarding prevalence, but it reduces the number of HIV-induced deaths and increases life expectancies. This research was partly financed by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) under grant No P18161-N13.