ArticlesEffect of a cash transfer programme for schooling on prevalence of HIV and herpes simplex type 2 in Malawi: a cluster randomised trial
Introduction
Two-thirds of HIV-infected people worldwide live in sub-Saharan Africa and 68% of new infections in adults occur in the region.1 Women and girls are at particularly high risk; 60% of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are women. Furthermore, people aged 15–24 years account for an estimated 45% of new infections worldwide.2 In this age group, women are more than twice as likely to be infected than are men. In Malawi, HIV prevalence in 2007 was 9·1% in young women, compared with 2·1% in young men.3 Prevention of HIV in girls is one of the most essential challenges to reach a turning point in the epidemic.4
Schooling has been suggested to be a social vaccine to prevent the spread of HIV.5 Although cross-sectional data6, 7 suggest a correlation between school attendance and HIV status, only two studies8, 9 have identified a possible causal link between school attendance and reduced risky sexual behaviour. Furthermore, although poverty, especially poverty of women, has been suggested as a major risk factor for HIV, evidence is mixed.10, 11, 12, 13 We are aware of only one cluster randomised trial14 with biological outcomes of a structural intervention to prevent HIV in women. The Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity (IMAGE) study14 assessed a structural intervention that combined a microfinance programme with a gender and HIV training curriculum and showed no effect on HIV incidence. No studies causally link increased schooling or income with a reduction in HIV risk. However, this absence of clear and credible evidence is not restricted to interventions in education or social protection. A review of behaviour change interventions has shown that “the reality that current behavior change interventions, by themselves, have been limited in their ability to control HIV infection in women and girls in low- and middle-income countries”.15 No randomised controlled trial assessing a behavioural intervention has shown a significant effect on HIV incidence.16
Conditional cash transfer programmes aim to reduce current poverty and, by investment in the education of children, future poverty. As such, they have been popular in development economics since the late 1990s, especially in Latin America.17, 18 The programmes provide cash transfers to poor households with school-aged children (generally aged 6–18 years), often with the requirement that the children attend school regularly. Conditional cash transfer programmes can be an important component of social protection policy and evidence suggests that they have improved the lives of poor people.19
Because conditional cash transfer programmes increase household income and school enrolment, they are particularly suitable for investigation of the importance of education and poverty as risk factors for HIV. We assess the effectiveness of cash transfers in Malawi for reduction of the risk of HIV and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infections in never-married girls aged 13–22 years.
Section snippets
Study design and participants
We undertook this cluster randomised trial in Zomba district, which like most of southern Malawi is characterised by poverty, low school enrolment, and a high prevalence of HIV.3, 20 Zomba district contains 550 enumeration areas defined by the National Statistical Office of Malawi. Each enumeration area contains an average of 250 households spanning several villages. Zomba city includes 50 enumeration areas; the remaining 500 are in seven traditional authorities. Before the start of the trial
Results
Figure 2 shows the trial profile. At baseline 3796 individuals were successfully interviewed. Although 133 (7%) baseline schoolgirls and 86 (10%) baseline dropouts were lost to follow-up at 12 months, none of the enumeration areas had complete loss to follow-up. Rates were similar at the 18-month visit (figure 2). Of the 1777 individuals selected for biological testing, 71 (4%) were lost to follow-up because of either refusal to get tested (n=51) or not being located by the data collection
Discussion
The cash transfer programme decreased the prevalences of HIV and HSV-2 infection after 18 months in girls aged 13–22 years who were enrolled in school at baseline. These effects are supported by changes in self-reported sexual behaviour; we detected no effects on age of sexual debut or unprotected sex, but individuals in the intervention group chose younger partners than did those in the control group and sexual activity was less frequent with those partners.
Few randomised controlled trials
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