Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
The single largest item in the US foreign aid health budget is antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Many supply- and demand-side factors in sub-Saharan Africa could cause smaller than expected epidemiological effects of this at-scale drug provision. We provide what appears to be the first quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of at-scale drug provision in a poor country, using the phased rollout of ART in Zambia, a setting where approximately one in six adults are HIV positive. Combining anthropometric data from national household surveys and a spatially based triple-difference specification, we find that local ART introduction increased the weight of high HIV likelihood adult women. This finding from a clinically difficult setting suggests that the generalized challenges of scalability of ART for adult health in sub-Saharan Africa are surmountable.