People with malaria who are exposed to HIV are more likely to get HIV/AIDS.

Systemic Help

Dealing with many diseases swamps the health care systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Providing ITNs to an area has been proven by repeated studies to lower the number of hospital visits by 25-40%. What effect on HIV/AIDS treatment would freeing up 25-40% of the resources of hospitals have on the systemic capacity to deal with HIV/AIDS?

Prevention

People with malaria who are exposed to HIV are more likely to get HIV/AIDS. When you lower malaria rates you also lower transmission of HIV/AIDS. Insecticide treated nets prevent half of the cases of malaria. The incremental costs of ITNs are so small that providing ITNs could be the most cost effective way to prevent HIV/AIDS. Not the only way, but a useful addition to the arsenal.

See the article on Malaria and HIV at Massive Effort (from the BBC News)

What is the value of preventing a single case of HIV/AIDS, now? How about a few thousand cases? A few hundred thousand cases?

Cost of Treatment

The value of treating a case of HIV/AIDS is how much, now?

The cost of mosquito nets is under $5. Providing ITNs to all children in Sub-Saharan Africa would be well under $500 million. Tens of millions of ITNs are already in place, so the annual costs would be closer to $100 million, much of which is already funded. Providing ITNs for HIV/AIDS patients could be a huge boon to their treatment and survival.

Prevention of Death from HIV/AIDS

The immediate cause of death for HIV/AIDS patients is often malaria. A person who is immunocompromised gets malaria more easily than the regular person. A case of malaria for a person who is immunocompromised is more likely to be lethal. There are 3-500,000,000 cases of malaria each year, mostly in Africa. That number could be cut in half from distribution of ITNs alone. How many lives would ITNs save from HIV/AIDS?

Delay of Death is Increasingly Important

As medicines improve and distribution improves, delaying death becomes increasing important to keep the patients alive until medicines do arrive. What value would a $3 net be? For many, possibly the difference between life and death.