Global Fund and Unitaid strengthen collaboration to make sure equitable access to health products – press release

Global Fund and Unitaid increase collaboration to make sure equitable access to health products

June 27, 2024

– The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) and Unitaid have signed a brand new framework for cooperation to make sure equitable access to high-quality and reasonably priced health products and innovations in low- and middle-income countries over the following three years.

“To end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, everyone must have unimpeded and equitable access to prevention, testing and treatment,” said Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund. “By strengthening our partnership with Unitaid, we are better prepared to address the challenges of affordability, quality, supply and delivery, ensuring that quality health products are available to all. Together, we will continue to build climate-resilient health systems, promote health innovation and support regional manufacturing, paving the way for a world free of the triple morbidity.”

“In the face of growing global inequalities, health partners must continually strive to maximize donor funding to reach as many people as possible,” said Philippe Duneton, Executive Director of Unitaid. “For almost 20 years, the Global Fund and Unitaid have been an example of what can be achieved when we work together. With this new agreement, we are committed to increasing our efforts to support countries in introducing innovative, cost-effective health products at scale, strengthening regional manufacturing and procurement, and implementing climate-smart health solutions.”

The partnership between the Global Fund and Unitaid is an integral a part of the worldwide health architecture, with each organization playing a strategic and complementary role in shaping global markets for HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria products. By accelerating modern and cost-effective health products through Unitaid upstream investments after which scaling them through the Global Fund, our combined approach helps achieve global HIV, TB and malaria targets more quickly and contributes to an increased return on investment [ download in English ] – money that will be used for other purposes and save more lives.

Under the brand new agreement, the Global Fund and Unitaid will strengthen their collaboration to discover promising health products in development and speed up approval, work with suppliers to make sure products can be found and reasonably priced at launch, and support countries in introducing recent products and mobilising demand.

For TB, a key area of ​​collaboration between the Global Fund and Unitaid is supporting countries in preparing to implement and scale up recent TB diagnostic tools, including by constructing demand generation strategies and developing accurate demand forecasts for brand new classes of TB diagnostics and guiding potential market-shaping interventions by Unitaid, the Global Fund and other partners.

In the case of malaria, a shared priority is to handle the growing threats of antimalarial drug resistance in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to addressing drivers of resistance, partners are searching for to extend countries’ adoption of targeted and proactive strategies, resembling multiple first-line therapies and diversified use of antimalarial drugs, to scale back drug selection pressure. We can even construct on the success of our joint investment in next-generation dual-insecticidal mosquito nets, which have already prevented an estimated 13 million cases of malaria and over 24,000 deaths in 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Unitaid and the Global Fund will proceed to collaborate on market-shaping interventions for priority HIV infections, co-infections and co-morbidities, including increasing access to long-acting HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) products resembling the dapivirine vaginal ring and cabotegravir for injection, in addition to other products much like those in the marketplace.

To learn more about our partnership, read our report: Unitaid and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria [ download in English | Français ] .