Trends in ICPD Categories

At the onset of the ICPD in 1994, the majority of all expenditures was on family planning and reproductive health. These expenditures accounted for 70 percent of total population and AIDS expenditures. Since then, the growing AIDS epidemic has caused a shift in expenditures to STD/HIV/AIDS activities. In 2002, STD/HIV/AIDS expenditures made up 43 percent of total population and AIDS expenditures.

A question many researchers and policy makers ask themselves today is whether funds allocated to HIV/AIDS are additional to those allocated to other population activities, or whether HIV/AIDS funds substitute family planning and reproductive health resources. To address this question, we should take a look at the absolute expenditures to all four ICPD categories over time.

Figure 1: Expenditures on ICPD costed-population ackage categories (in US$), 1996-2004 (Figures for 2003 and 2004 are estimates). #image:75#

Over the period 1996 to 2004, we see that expenditures for family planning, reproductive health and basic research slightly change in absolute terms. STD/HIV/AIDS expenditures however, have increased significantly over the whole period. Estimated STD/HIV/AIDS expenditures for 2003 and 2004 are particularly high, whereas the moderate gains made in other categories in 2002 seem to be lost again. The 2003 and 2004 estimates suggest, therefore, that the growth of STD/HIV/AIDS expenditures after 2002 is partly at the expense of the other three categories.