Costs and benefits of multidrug, multidose antiretroviral therapy for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in the Dominican Republic.

Objective: To investigate whether costs of multidose antiretroviral regimens (MD-ARVs), including highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV might be offset by savings gained from treating fewer perinatally acquired infections.

Methods: Rates of MTCT reported in the Dominican Republic among mother-infant pairs treated with single-dose nevirapine (SD-NVP; n=39) and MD-ARVs (n=91) for PMTCT were compared. Annual births to women infected with HIV were estimated from seroprevalence studies.