New York and Geneva, 23 September 2026.
Unitaid marks its 20th anniversary this week, during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
The anniversary falls in a week when the future of global health is under intense debate. International financing is declining, and countries are asking for a system that is more efficient and more aligned with their priorities. Innovation moves fast, at the speed of science, but whether lifesaving treatments and diagnostics reach people is the question the reform debate has so far left unanswered.
Since 2006, working with countries, communities, industry and partners, Unitaid has removed the barriers that keep lifesaving products out of reach: high prices, limited supply and products poorly adapted to the places where they are needed.
Reflecting on Unitaid’s 20th anniversary, President Bill Clinton, Board Chair and Co-Founder of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) recalled the early work between the two organizations to expand access to lifesaving health products.
“Twenty years ago, too many lifesaving medicines and tests were out of reach for the people who needed them most. Unitaid and CHAI showed that we could bring prices down, expand supply, and get new treatments and tests to people much faster,” said President Bill Clinton. “The next generation of breakthroughs should be measured the same way: by how quickly they reach the people who need them.”
Today, that focus on turning innovation into access runs across Unitaid’s work:
For a woman in a clinic, each of these results is the difference between an existing yet unavailable product and one that affords her a full healthy life.
"I have lived what it means to face tuberculosis, HIV and cervical cancer, and what it means when the health products you need are out of reach. I have seen that same reality in the communities I work with," said Carol Nawina Nyirenda, community representative on Unitaid's Executive Board. "Access means that lifesaving innovations are not just developed, but are affordable, available where people need them and shaped by the voices of the people who will use them."
As heads of state and leaders discuss the future of the global health ecosystem, Unitaid welcomes a debate that countries have asked for and that the moment demands
Reform must protect what turns science into results for countries and communities. COVID-19 and Ebola made the equation clear: without equity there is no health security.
"The ministers I meet say the same three things: respond at the primary care level, spend every dollar better and bring us breakthrough health tools at prices we can afford," said Dr. Philippe Duneton, Executive Director of Unitaid. "The difference between a treatment that arrives and one that does not is the difference between life and death. Whatever the global health ecosystem looks like, it should be assessed on that."
With less money for global health and more at stake, Unitaid calls for access to be built into any reform from the start, with communities at the center, greater ownership to countries and regions and production closer to where health products are needed most. Unitaid will keep taking the first risk on new products, before the market invests in them and before the volumes exist, working at the front of the pipeline so that countries and larger partners can deliver at scale. That is what Unitaid was built for and what it will keep doing, as an agile organization hosted by WHO.
Kyle Wilkinson
Communications officer
+41 79 445 17 45
[email protected]