Health Policy, 11 (1989) 169- 186 Elsevier 169 HPE 00267 Guidelines for rapid estimation of the direct and indirect costs of HIV infection in a developing country* Mead Over’, Stefano Bertozzi* and James Chin3 ‘Population and Human Resources Department, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.; *Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.; and 3Global Programme on AIDS, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland Accepted 31 January 1989 Summary The economic impact of AIDS may be especially severe in developing nations be- cause of the additional burden on scarce health care resources and the potential loss of human capital. We describe a methodology for estimating the direct and indirect costs of HIV infection. Our approach is designed for the typical environment of in- ternational economic consulting, where time is short, and data sparse. We focus on HIV rather than AIDS because the only way now known to prevent AIDS is to pre- vent HIV infection. HIV infection; Cost of illness; Developing nation; Human capital; AIDS treatment cost * This article is based on a paper presented at the conference, ‘The Economic Impact of AIDS: Research Methodology’, held at The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, M D on September 27- 28, 1988. Address for correspondence: Dr. Mead Over, Economist, The World Bank, Population and Human Resources Department, 1818 H Street N.W., Washington, D.C., 20433, U.S.A. 0168-8510/89/$03.50 0 1989 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (Biomedical Division)