About This Tool
Introduction
This Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) Cost Estimation Tool was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines Technical Advisory Group at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (the Foundation).
In July 2010 the WHO revised its global guidance on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and infant feeding in the context of HIV. 
Key changes in the 2010 revised WHO PMTCT Guidelines include; expansion of access to CD4 testing for pregnant women living with HIV, initiation of treatment eligible pregnant women living with HIV on anti-retroviral treatment (ART) at a higher CD4 threshold, and provision of longer regimens of combination antiretroviral (ARV) prophylaxis for pregnant women living with HIV and their HIV-exposed infants, including during the antenatal and post-natal breastfeeding periods.
Audience and Purpose
Translating the 2010 revised WHO PMTCT guidelines into practice has substantial cost implications. This PMTCT Cost Estimation Tool is intended to serve as a resource for PMTCT program planners/managers at the national, district, or program levels to estimate context-specific financial costs associated with implementation and scale-up of protocols consistent with 2010 revised WHO PMTCT guidelines.
This tool estimates the financial costs of a PMTCT program for a given population of pregnant women with a known or estimated HIV prevalence over a one year period. This tool estimates costs from a public health program perspective. The model does not include economic costs, such as the fraction of existing equipment at clinics that will be used for these efforts.
Although the model estimates costs for a 12-month timeframe, it can be used to estimate the financial costs for multiple years (not adjusted for inflation) by doing a separate analysis for each year and then summing the results of each year.