The reason historically is that bed nets seem to deliver more improved health per dollar (one QALY <$100) than scaling up delivery of ARVs (which seem to cost a few hundred dollars per QALY depending on what study you look at). ARVs have gotten cheaper, but not yet enough to beat bed nets as far as I’m aware.
If you were funding biomedical research HIV may well look better, because the damage done by HIV is increasing, while malaria is gradually being beaten back. But most EA funding hasn’t gone to medical research due to the major challenges that individual donors trying to support that kind of work.
The reason historically is that bed nets seem to deliver more improved health per dollar (one QALY <$100) than scaling up delivery of ARVs (which seem to cost a few hundred dollars per QALY depending on what study you look at). ARVs have gotten cheaper, but not yet enough to beat bed nets as far as I’m aware.
If you were funding biomedical research HIV may well look better, because the damage done by HIV is increasing, while malaria is gradually being beaten back. But most EA funding hasn’t gone to medical research due to the major challenges that individual donors trying to support that kind of work.