27 June 2024
GENEVA – The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) and Unitaid signed a new collaboration framework to advance equitable access to high-quality and affordable health products and innovations in low- and middle-income countries over the next 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 equipped to tackle challenges of affordability, quality, supply and delivery, ensuring all individuals receive quality-assured health products. Together, we will continue building climate-resilient health systems, promoting health innovations and fostering regional manufacturing, paving the way toward a world free from the three diseases.”
“In the face of rising global inequality, health partners must constantly strive to make the most of donor funds in order to reach as many people as possible,” said Philippe Duneton, Executive Director of Unitaid. “For nearly 20 years, the Global Fund and Unitaid have been an example of what can be accomplished by working together. With this new agreement, we commit to increasing our efforts to support countries to introduce innovative, cost-effective health products at scale, strengthen regional manufacturing and procurement, and introduce climate-smart health solutions.”
The partnership between the Global Fund and Unitaid is an integral part of the global health architecture, with each organization playing strategic and complementary roles in shaping global markets for HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria products. By fast-tracking innovative and cost-effective health products through upstream Unitaid investments and then taking them to scale through the Global Fund, our combined approach helps reach global targets on HIV, TB and malaria faster, and contributes to increased return on investment [ download in English ] – money that can be used elsewhere to save more lives.
As per the new agreement, the Global Fund and Unitaid will increase collaboration to identify promising health products in development and accelerate approvals, engage with suppliers to secure availability and affordability of products as they go to market, and support countries to introduce new products and mobilize demand.
For TB, a key area of collaboration for Global Fund and Unitaid is to support countries in preparing for the implementation and scale up of new TB diagnostic tools, including by building demand generation strategies, and to compile accurate demand forecasts in new classes of TB diagnostics to guide potential market shaping interventions by Unitaid, the Global Fund and other partners.
For malaria, a shared priority is to tackle growing threats of antimalaria drug resistance in sub–Saharan Africa. In addition to addressing the drivers of resistance, the partners seek to increase country adoption of deliberate and pre-emptive strategies such as multiple first line therapies and diversified use of antimalarials to reduce drug selection pressure. We will also build on the success of our joint investment into next-generation, dual-insecticide mosquito nets, which have already prevented an estimated 13 million malaria cases and over 24,000 deaths across 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Unitaid and the Global Fund will continue to collaborate on market shaping interventions across priority HIV and co-infections and co-morbidities, including accelerating access to long-acting HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) products such as the dapivirine vaginal ring and injectable cabotegravir, as well as other near-to-market products.
To learn more about our partnership, read our report: Unitaid and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria [ download in English | Français ] .