Global Fund report highlights major progress in fight against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, reduced prices of essential medicines – press releases

Global Fund report highlights major progress in fight against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, reduced prices of essential medicines

September 19, 2024

Investments within the fight against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria have saved a combined 65 million lives and reduced the overall variety of deaths from the three diseases by 61% since 2002, in line with a brand new report by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

“These are not just numbers,” said Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund. “Each of the 65 million lives our partnership has saved is a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a teacher, a worker. Every life saved, every infection prevented, has a ripple effect across families, communities and entire nations.”

Over the past twenty years, the impact achieved through Global Fund partnerships has led to dramatic improvements in life expectancy: global inequality in life expectancy across countries decreased by one third between 2002 and 2019. Half of this decline is resulting from reduced mortality from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The report shows that in 2023, programmes supported by the Global Fund to fight HIV, tuberculosis and malaria fully recovered from the impact of disruptions attributable to COVID-19.

On HIV, the Global Fund partnership has sustained progress in HIV treatment uptake, with a record 25 million people now on antiretroviral therapy. In 2023, the partnership also conducted 53.8 million HIV tests and reached 17.9 million individuals with HIV prevention services. It has supported increased access to effective prevention options, including oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and the dapivirine vaginal ring. However, human rights barriers, equivalent to criminal laws, policies and practices, equivalent to stigma, discrimination and violence, including gender-based violence, persist and stop people in lots of regions of the world from accessing HIV prevention, testing, treatment and care.

“The fight against disease is as much a fight for justice and equality as it is a biomedical fight,” Sands said. “Even the most innovative biomedical tools will fail if those who need them most cannot get them.”

Global Fund-supported TB programmes have seen full recovery from the disruptions of COVID-19. Using progressive tools and recent approaches, including mobile diagnostic units and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in screening, equivalent to AI-based computer-assisted detection software and digital chest X-rays, more individuals with TB have been detected and treated than ever before. More than 7.1 million individuals with TB have been cured, 121,000 have received treatment for drug-resistant TB, and a couple of million people exposed to TB have received preventive therapy. However, drug-resistant TB – considered one of the biggest causes of mortality related to antimicrobial resistance – is a growing threat.

On malaria, the Global Fund has accelerated the equitable deployment of prevention, testing and treatment tools. Major achievements include the distribution of 227 million bed nets, testing of 335 million suspected malaria cases and treatment of 171 million malaria cases. A complete of 44.6 million children have received seasonal malaria chemoprevention. Malaria stays a frightening global health challenge as conflict, climate change and growing insecticide resistance threaten the numerous progress made within the fight against the disease over the past twenty years.

The report also illustrates the transformative contribution of the Global Fund partnership, beyond the three diseases, to strengthening health and social systems, reducing global inequalities in access to health care, and accelerating progress towards universal health coverage (UHC).

For example, it shows – for the primary time – how the Global Fund’s investments in HIV over the past twenty years have kept hundreds of thousands of individuals healthy, freeing up 1.66 billion hospital days that will otherwise have been used for HIV-related activities and stopping 1.36 billion outpatient visits, generating $85 billion in savings.

“Where three diseases consume more than 50% of health system resources, the impact of reducing their burden on the overall health system capacity can be dramatic,” Sands said. “This means lower infant and maternal mortality, fewer deaths from acute injuries and other conditions. In addition, our continued investments in community health workers, laboratories, supply chains, disease surveillance systems and other components of the health system better prepare countries to prevent, detect and respond to other diseases, such as mpox or future pandemics.”

In 2023, the Global Fund invested its highest amount ever – $1.8 billion – to strengthen health and social systems. Between 2024 and 2026, the Global Fund plans to take a position as much as $6 billion in health and social systems to support countries in improving health outcomes across all diseases, constructing pandemic preparedness, and dealing towards universal health coverage.

The Global Fund is committed to making sure equitable access to quality-proven health products and innovations. It uses its scale to shape markets by encouraging producers to satisfy global quality requirements, to make sure increased supply capability for low- and middle-income countries, and to lower the costs of health products.

In 2023, these efforts led to significant price reductions for key commodities across three diseases, enabling countries to expand their reach and reach more people. For HIV, the Global Fund and partners secured a 25% price reduction for TLD, the popular first-line treatment for HIV. For TB, the partnership reduced prices by 20% for diagnostic cartridges, by 30% for 3HP, a short-term preventive treatment for TB, and by 55% for bedaquiline, the principal treatment for drug-resistant TB. Using the newly established Revolving Facility, the Global Fund accelerated the scalable introduction of latest dual-active ingredient bed nets, achieving sustainable prices for this recent bed net, which is >45% more practical against malaria than existing insecticide-treated bed nets.

In 2023, the world is once more hit by multiple crises, including climate change, conflict, and attacks on human rights, gender equality, and civil society. These crises have a direct impact on the fight against HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria.

In response, the Global Fund has adapted its interventions to supply agile support through grant flexibility, reprogramming and the supply of emergency funding. For example, it has reprogrammed its grants to raised serve communities caught up in escalating conflicts in Sudan, Ukraine and the Middle East. To support countries adapt to the impacts of maximum weather and climate events, it has restructured grants and in addition offered access to emergency funding in countries equivalent to Zambia, Kenya and Somalia. The Global Fund invests 70% of its funding within the 50 countries most vulnerable to climate change. To address human rights and gender-based barriers to accessing health services, the partnership has expanded the Breaking Down Barriers initiative [ download in English | Español | Français | Português | Русский ] ensuring inclusiveness and equity in healthcare delivery.

“Our model is built on partnerships that thrive on inclusive governance, making us a global movement of civil society, governments, private sector partners, technical partners, and communities affected by these three diseases in more than 100 countries,” Sands said. “This partnership has proven to be incredibly important as we address the many challenges we have faced this year.”

The Global Fund is committed to maximizing the collective impact of worldwide health efforts, especially because the world faces multiple and overlapping crises. It has already established several broad workstreams with partners, including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Global Financing Facility, and can proceed to work closely with long-standing partners equivalent to the World Health Organization, the World Bank, Unitaid and others to avoid wasting more lives and speed up progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 3 on health and well-being for all.