The effect of antiretroviral treatment on health care utilization in rural South Africa: A population-based cohort study

Background The effect of the rapid scale-up of vertical antiretroviral treatment (ART) programs for HIV in sub-Saharan Africa on the overall health system is under intense debate. Some have argued that these programs have reduced access for people suffering from diseases unrelated to HIV because ART programs have drained human and physical resources from other parts of the health system; others have claimed that the investments through ART programs have strengthened the general health system and the population health impacts of ART have freed up health care capacity for the treatment of diseases that are not related to HIV. To establish the population-level impact of ART programs on health care utilization in the public-sector health system, we compared trends in health care utilization among HIV-infected people receiving and not receiving ART with HIV-uninfected people during a period of rapid ART scale-up. Methods and Findings We used data from the Wellcome Trust Africa Centre for Population Health, which annually elicited information on health care utilization from all surveillance participants over the period 2009–2012 (N = 32,319). We determined trends in hospitalization, and public-sector and private-sector primary health care (PHC) clinic visits for HIV-infected and -uninfected people over a time period of rapid ART scale-up (2009–2012) in this community. We regressed health care utilization on HIV status and ART status in different calendar years, controlling for sex, age, and area of residence. The proportion of people who reported to have visited a public-sector primary health care (PHC) clinic in the last 6 months increased significantly over the period 2009–2012, for both HIV-infected people (from 59% to 67%; p<0.001), and HIV-uninfected people (from 41% to 47%; p<0.001). In contrast, the proportion of HIV-infected people visiting a private-sector PHC clinic declined from 22% to 12% (p<0.001) and hospitalization rates declined from 128 to 82 per 1000 PY (p<0.001). For HIV-uninfected people, the proportion visiting a private-sector PHC clinic declined from 16% to 9%, and hospitalization rates declined from 78 to 44 per 1000 PY (p