OBJECTIVES: New therapeutic approaches allow better control of HIV and HCV infections while, at the same time, increasing the expenses of the health care system. Here we compare health care expenses and numbers of patients suffering from HIV and chronic HCV infections in the Czech Republic in 2008 – 2018.

METHODS: Numbers of reported HIV and HCV infections were extracted from ISIN and EPIDAT databases curated by the National Institute of Public Health of the Czech Republic. Health care system direct pharmaceutical expenses were estimated based on the Supplies of medicinal products registry of the State Institute for Drug Control (SUKL).

RESULTS: Health care system direct pharmaceutical expenses in the last 11 years have more than tripled for both chronic HCV and HIV. In case of HCV, they increased from 13 million EUR in 2008 to 47 million EUR in 2018, while the number of newly reported chronic hepatitis C infections, that approximately equals the number of treated patients, remained constant (between 600 and 900). HIV therapy costs increased from nearly 8 million EUR in 2008 to 28 million EUR in 2018, while the number of HIV positive (approximately equal to the number of treated) persons increased from 1 to 3 thousand and yearly per-patient pharmaceutical costs were more or less constant (7 to 11 thousand EUR).

CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis shows marked increase in health care expenses for HCV and HIV in the Czech Republic in 2008 – 2018. Whereas in case of HIV, the increase in total expenses paralleled the increase in the number of patients, in case of HCV, the number of yearly treated patients was relatively stable and the remarkable increase was caused by expensive new drugs (direct antiviral agents DAA) entering the market.