Unitaid’s impact 2017 results & key performance indicators

Unitaid is pleased to share its 2017 results report (French), which shows significant progress across Unitaid’s portfolio in supporting our three strategic objectives: fostering innovation, increasing access to better health products, and working with partners to scale up our innovations.

To meet our goals, we need a clear way of measuring our progress toward them. The results report shows Unitaid’s performance in a number of critical areas and compares it to the goals we’ve set for ourselves, including Unitaid’s Strategic and Operational Key Performance Indicators.

All Unitaid grants that closed during 2017 fall within the scope of the report. Highlights include the STEP-TB program, which secured the availability of the first appropriately dosed, good-tasting tuberculosis medicine for children, brought it to market at an affordable price, and has led, with the support of scale-up partners, to the medicine’s adoption in 79 countries.

The report also showcases projects that are under way and already demonstrating potential for impact in areas such as self-testing for HIV, development of new insecticides to kill resistant mosquitoes that spread malaria, and creating access to affordable, generic versions of the world’s best HIV drugs in lower-income countries.

VIEW REPORT
English/French

Chile’s Marta Maurás to be interim chair of Unitaid Executive Board

Geneva — Marta Maurás Perez, Chile’s former ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, has been invited to serve a term of up to one year as interim chair of the Unitaid Executive Board.

Ambassador Maurás will lead Unitaid’s 12-member decision-making body, which sets the organization’s objectives, monitors its projects and approves budgets. She served from 2014-16 as the board’s vice-chair.

“Unitaid’s invaluable mission as an accelerator of health innovation aims to ensure that all people can access the best that science and technology can offer to safeguard their lives and wellbeing,” said Ambassador Maurás.

Ambassador Maurás is a sociologist, international consultant and lecturer on children’s rights, gender equity, human rights, social policy and international relations, and an expert in multilateral affairs.

During a long and varied international career she has held posts including director for economic and social affairs under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as well as chief of cabinet to the deputy secretary-general. She was the first woman to serve as Chile’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

She has also held numerous senior positions with UNICEF, working in Latin America and the Caribbean, New York, Swaziland, Mozambique and Pakistan.  She organized UNICEF’s work extending basic health services to women and children in conflict zones and emergency situations. In the course of her work, she took part in negotiations that led to the liberation of 15 teenage girls abducted by the ELN rebel group in Colombia.

French ambassador for global health and members of parliament visit Unitaid

Geneva — French ambassador for global health Stéphanie Seydoux and a group of members of parliament visited Unitaid’s offices on Monday, where they attended briefings on subjects ranging from strategy to the impact that Unitaid grants are having on global efforts to fight disease.

The parliamentarians, all of them members of the committee for foreign affairs, included Valérie Thomas and Hubert Julien-Laferrière, who are respectively deputy president and member of the study group on global health, and Frédéric Barbier, who is part of the study group on development cooperation.

France helped to found Unitaid and is its leading donor.

Impact story: Medicines Patent Pool

Price cut on medicine will help preserve the health of more people living with HIV

Geneva — Unitaid and Indian drug manufacturer Cipla Ltd. struck a landmark agreement today that will lower the price of the first combination therapy (containing co-trimoxazole, isoniazid and vitamin B6) that prevents opportunistic infections in people living with HIV.

The HIV virus can weaken the immune system, increasing the risk of dangerous infection by bacteria and viruses.

Under this agreement, Cipla will reduce the ceiling price of the medicine by more than 30% from US$ 3 to US$ 1.99 per person, per month, for all public-sector procurers in low- and middle-income countries. The price of the product is expected to come down more as governments and international funding bodies procure larger quantities for their HIV treatment programmes.

“Unitaid-funded projects are putting more people on improved HIV treatment, but we continue to see high rates of opportunistic infections,” Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora said. “By preventing these deadly infections, more people living with HIV will lead healthier lives.“

Additional manufacturers of this product are expected to enter the market in due course, bringing competition and greater supply to meet patient demand. Unitaid, meanwhile, will continue working with governments, international funding bodies, and its implementing partners to speed the introduction of the new therapy into countries’ HIV treatment programmes.

The drug, known as Q-TIB, has been on the market since 2017, but its high price has put it out of reach of countries’ health budgets.

“Despite great progress in the global response to HIV, up to one third of people living with HIV seek care only when they have advanced disease. They often present with a range of serious opportunistic infections,” said Dr Gottfried Hirnschall, director of WHO’s HIV Department. “Providing access to new combination therapies in the form of a single pill daily will make it easier and more affordable to prevent   these common infections and help save lives.”

In 2016, about one million people died of AIDS-related illnesses, according to WHO, most of them from TB, bacterial and fungal infections.

“We very much welcome this initiative,” said Dr. Osamu Kunii, head of the Global Fund’s Strategy, Investment and Impact Division. “This single combination of medicines in one tablet has several critical advantages over separate tablets. By reducing the number of pills people need to take, we will see better medication adherence resulting in improved health outcomes.”

The collaboration is part of Unitaid’s broader effort to expand access to a package of essential products for screening, preventing and treating the most prevalent opportunistic infections in people living with HIV.

The combination therapy is a once-daily pill that protects in three ways: against TB, the leading cause of death among people with HIV; and against other life-threatening bacterial and protozoan infections. The new combination is expected to be particularly effective in reducing TB, because it will increase the use of isoniazid, the TB-fighting component whose availability has been inconsistent.

Q-TIB was prequalified by WHO in 2017, which authorizes it to be procured and distributed by international funding bodies, such as the Global Fund and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Andrew Hurst, Unitaid, Geneva – tel. +41 22 791 3859, hursta@unitaid.who.int

Dominique De Santis, Unitaid, Geneva – tel. +41 78 911 5327, desantisd@unitaid.who.int

Unitaid at the World Health Assembly – #WHA71

Unitaid launches call for proposals to help eliminate cervical cancer

Geneva – Unitaid is seeking to fund smart, innovative projects that will help eliminate cervical cancer, a leading cause of death in low- and middle-income countries, particularly among women with HIV.

One woman dies of cervical cancer every two minutes, with about 90 percent of the deaths occurring in less affluent countries. Cervical cancer is caused by certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV), an extremely common group of viruses.

The HPV projects that Unitaid will fund would improve and expand screening and treatment for cervical cancer, with special attention given to women living with HIV. They are particularly vulnerable given that HIV/HPV co-infection progresses more quickly to cervical cancer.

“Unitaid is committed to promote innovative technologies that will empower women to screen for cervical cancer and access treatment more quickly and easily,“ said Lelio Marmora, Unitaid Executive Director. “Too often we hear tragic stories of women in low-income countries who travel long distances to access a health clinic only to discover they have late-stage cervical cancer.“

With this call for proposals, Unitaid aims to contribute to eliminating cervical cancer as a public health problem, an objective set by the World Health Organization at this year’s World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva.

“Through cost-effective, evidence-based interventions, including HPV vaccination of girls, screening  and  treatment of pre-cancerous lesions, and improving access to diagnosis and treatment of invasive cancers,  we can eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem and make it a disease of the past,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

This HPV call seeks projects that would:

  • Create a market for the best available tools to screen HPV and treat women at risk of developing cervical cancer in low- and middle-income countries, including point of care molecular tests and treatment devices.
  • Remove market barriers that stand in the way of these emerging tools being put to use.
  • Help to efficiently and economically integrate these tools into countries, setting them up for large-scale expansion in the future.

In high-income countries, strategies that identify women at risk of cervical cancer and provide them with early treatment have dramatically reduced illness and death. In most low- and middle-income countries, screening and treatment are very limited.

Through its calls, Unitaid finds new ideas to help alleviate the burden of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. A review committee of independent experts in global health helps Unitaid choose the best proposals to fund through a competitive selection process.

Unitaid’s investments support global drive to end TB

Geneva — On the occasion of World TB Day, Unitaid wishes to reassert its commitment to ending tuberculosis, with special consideration for the estimated 1 million children who are among the most vulnerable and neglected victims of this curable disease.

Since its inception, Unitaid has funded more than US$ 460 million in innovative TB grants. In the last quarter of 2017, Unitaid turned decisively toward providing more help for children, with $117 million in new grants that include paediatric TB prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

“We are not standing still in our response,” Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora said. “We’re increasing our investments and confronting tuberculosis and its drug-resistant strains on every front—prevention, testing and treatment.”

One of Unitaid’s highest priorities is investing in innovative grants to keep drugs effective in the face of a world crisis of resistant bugs, including strains of bacteria that cause TB. About half of Unitaid’s  US$ 1 billion grant portfolio is invested in projects that fight antimicrobial resistance.

Unitaid has invested US $26 million in TB Xpert, an innovative machine that quickly diagnoses TB and its drug-resistant forms, and US $60 million in the EndTB project to improve treatment for multidrug-resistant TB.

Unitaid is an important contributor to the massive global effort to end the world’s TB epidemic by 2030. The World Health Organization’s End TB Strategy is a blueprint for bringing about an 80 percent drop in new infections, a 90 percent drop in deaths and 100 percent protection for families from catastrophic TB-related costs by the year 2035.

Unitaid’s active TB portfolio provides nearly US$ 180 million for developing innovative drugs, diagnostics and strategies to fight latent, childhood and drug-resistant TB. At the same time, Unitaid funding for the Medicines Patent Pool is being used to bring the best new TB medicines to low-resource countries, as quickly as possible, and at affordable prices. The World Health Organization’s prequalification programme, also supported by Unitaid, approved two child-friendly TB medicines in late 2017.

Our four newest TB grants include:

  • US $ 58 million to expand short-course preventive TB therapy for HIV-positive people and children exposed to TB in Africa, Asia and South America.
  • US $36.3 million to improve the treatment services and market for paediatric TB medicines and incorporate TB control into HIV, maternal and child health services in India and nine African countries.
  • US $14.6 million to widen the availability of childhood TB diagnosis, using fast tests that can be done even in small local clinics. The project is taking place in six African countries and Cambodia.
  • US $7.4 million to collaborate with the World Health Organization’s Global TB Program on diagnosis and treatment of paediatric, latent and multidrug-resistant TB in high-burden countries.

Download here:

  1. our TB impact story
  2. our animation