A dollar invested in aiding HIV patients was worth almost twice that to the people it was targeting with help, according to a new study by the NGO KHANA.

The NGO’s research director, Heng Sopheap, said the “Social Return on Investment” study was the first in Cambodia to try to discover the effectiveness of support to the HIV community.

“We want to know how much will be returned to society when we invest in the HIV Integrate Care and Prevention Program,” he said. “From our study we saw that if we invested $1, we generated $1.73 in social, health and economic benefits.”

KHANA interviewed 2,000 HIV-positive people over two months in 2011 in Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Speu and Prey Veng provinces.

Jean-Francois Cautain, head of the European Union delegation that supports KHANA’s HIV program, said in a statement that the study “helped build a stronger evidence-base to better understand the successes and challenges of HIV programs in Cambodia”.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mom Kunthear at [email protected]