Fresh water demand is rising due to factors such as population growth, economic development, and land use changes. At the same time, climate change is rendering the water supply even more uncertain for the future. Due to recurring water restrictions and increasing water-related fees triggered by droughts and water shortages, there is a widespread, growing discomfort with respect to future water availability. Among key stakeholders and local policy makers, this has led to an increased interest in modeling the availability of water resources, with the aim of developing and implementing the appropriate water resource infrastructure and management strategies. This paper examines the Washington metropolitan area (WMA) water supply system and uses a system dynamics approach as a planning tool to make an exploratory assessment of the adequacy of the study area's water supply system to meet future water demand under the influence of substantial droughts and climate change. This assessment finds that the study area is self-sufficient under normal climate conditions during the entire planning horizon but that it will be strained under moderately severe droughts. On the basis of the temperature, streamflow and precipitation projections made by climate change models specific to the WMA region, climate change is expected to improve the water supply reliability. However, climate change has uncertainty associated with it. One of the four climate models for the Potomac River basin projects a decrease in the precipitation and streamflow, which may result in a reduction in the water supply and the system's reliability. Regulating the price and the system losses are valuable tools that can be leveraged. But these policy interventions require stakeholder participation (price regulation) and capital investments (reduction of distribution losses). Finally, system reliability can also be improved by increasing water supplies.
Introduction
Despite antiretroviral therapy (ART) scale‐up among people living with HIV (PLHIV), those with advanced HIV disease (AHD) (defined in adults as CD4 count <200 cells/mm
3
or clinical stage 3 or 4), remain at high risk of death from opportunistic infections. The shift from routine baseline CD4 testing towards viral load testing in conjunction with “Test and Treat” has limited AHD identification.
Methods
We used official estimates and existing epidemiological data to project deaths from tuberculosis (TB) and cryptococcal meningitis (CM) among PLHIV‐initiating ART with CD4 <200 cells/mm
3
, in the absence of select World Health Organization recommended diagnostic or therapeutic protocols for patients with AHD. We modelled the reduction in deaths, based on the performance of screening/diagnostic testing and the coverage and efficacy of treatment/preventive therapies for TB and CM. We compared projected TB and CM deaths in the first year of ART from 2019 to 2024, with and without CD4 testing. The analysis was performed for nine countries: South Africa, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Results
The effect of CD4 testing comes through increased identification of AHD and consequent eligibility for protocols for AHD prevention, diagnosis and management; algorithms for CD4 testing avert between 31% and 38% of deaths from TB and CM in the first year of ART. The number of CD4 tests required per death averted varies widely by country from approximately 101 for South Africa to 917 for Kenya.
Conclusions
This analysis supports retaining baseline CD4 testing to avert deaths from TB and CM, the two most deadly opportunistic infections among patients with AHD. However, national programmes will need to weigh the cost of increasing CD4 access against other HIV‐related priorities and allocate resources accordingly.
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