Socio-cultural, economic and health system factors that determine access to subsidized ARV in southeast Nigeria: A socio-economic and policy analysis. (360G-Wellcome-085839_Z_08_Z)

Since the advent of ARV drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, there exists now a high hope of survival for people living with HIV/AIDS all over the world. The problem of accessing these drugs has remained the greatest challenge particularly in the developing countries where poor HIV/AIDS patients are unable to access these drugs. The Federal Government of Nigeria initiated the National Antiretroviral Drug Access Programme to ensure that the ARV drugs reach those patients that need them at no financial cost. Despite this, ENSACA (2007) reports that the unmet need for ARV treatment is still enormous. It is therefore, necessary to explore the overall implementation process to know the problems facing the beneficiaries who access these drugs at the facility level. Hence we need to know the household and community factors, service delivery, and policy factors that constrain or enable equitable access to ART at the facility, and how the level of influence of different actors could be synergized for increased equitable access to ART. The methods to be employed in the research will be the qualitative and quantitative methods. The analysis will be carried out using Atlas ti software packages for the qualitative method and SPSS and STATA for the quantitative. The study will develop strategies for improving provision, access and use of ART.