Unitaid to partner with communities and civil society to drive access to new drug-resistant TB treatment regimens with new call for proposals

Geneva – As the United Nations General Assembly convenes world leaders at the High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis (TB) this week, discussions will focus on the urgent need for access and innovation to put an end to a disease that we have known how to cure for decades. Despite this, TB continues to kill more people each year than any other infectious disease.

Advocates and global health leaders have called out the persistent crisis of drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant TB, which continues to claim the lives of 2 in every 5 people affected. The challenge of treating drug-resistant TB is also a major driver of antimicrobial resistance and poses a serious threat to supplies of antibiotics critical to treating a range of infections.

But advances in drug-resistant TB treatment regimens bring hope. Dramatic improvements have cut treatment time in half and promise to radically alter outcomes for millions of people. However, new medicines and other tools are often slow to arrive in the countries that need them most, and even when they do, most people with drug-resistant TB never get diagnosed because access to testing that can accurately identify resistance is limited.

Unitaid’s latest call for proposals is aimed at driving demand for new medicines and accelerating the introduction of improved drug-resistant treatment regimens alongside complementary interventions such as improved diagnostics and adherence support. This package of care is intended to ensure people living with TB can get the medicines they need as quickly as possible while safeguarding against further resistance.

Civil society and community-based leadership will be critical to understanding the needs of affected communities as well as the barriers they face in accessing treatment. These advocates will play a key role in reaching policymakers and at-risk populations alike, raising awareness and understanding of drug-resistant TB treatment, driving demand for new regimens and diagnostics, and strengthening links between health services to reduce the gaps in the TB response.

These efforts should underpin targeted strategies to accelerate implementation, expand access to new regimens and improve case finding and resistance monitoring while protecting the long-term efficacy of key medicines for future generations.

Find out more about this latest funding opportunity here.

Media contact:

For more information and media requests:

Hervé Verhoosel

Team Lead, Communications

M: +33 6 22 59 73 54

verhooselh@unitaid.who.int

Failure to implement contact tracing and tuberculosis prevention would result in close to 1 million deaths by 2035, according to new study

Combination intervention found to be cost-effective in averting illness and deaths in high-risk groups

  • People living in close contact with a person with TB disease are at highest risk of infection, and account for a significant percentage of the 10.6 million new TB infections each year. 
  • Analysis shows that implementing a combined strategy of identifying household contacts and providing TB preventive treatment is cost-effective and would cut deaths by 35%  among household contacts of all ages and people living with HIV by 2035. 
  • Additionally, because TB diagnosis is so low among children under five – just over 3 in 10 children with TB are identified – contact tracing and prevention would have an outsized impact on reducing child death from TB. 
  • TB prevention and contact tracing can be delivered cost effectively thanks, in part, to the significant price reductions in short-course therapy achieved in recent years. With further decreases in price and by improving the efficiency and integration of contact tracing into disease responses, the intervention could benefit from greater cost savings and public health benefit. 
  • As world leaders prepare for the second United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB this September, up-front multi-stakeholder commitment and financial backing is urgently needed to reap the massive rewards of preventing TB illness and death.

Johannesburg/Geneva – A new study published today in The Lancet Global Health found that the lives of 850,000 people could be saved by 2035 if short-course tuberculosis (TB) preventive treatment is provided to people living with HIV and contacts of individuals newly diagnosed with TB. 700,000 of those lives saved would be among children aged 15 years and younger. 

The study, co-authored by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the Aurum Institute and global health agency Unitaid, also found the combined intervention of contact tracing and TB prevention to be broadly cost-effective for household contacts of all ages. The impact was particularly high among children under the age of five who face higher risks of death. 

“Tuberculosis remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, despite being preventable and curable,” said Professor Gavin Churchyard, Group Chief Executive Officer of the Aurum Institute. “Although progress has been made in preventing TB among people living with HIV, we’ve lagged behind in keeping family members—especially children—free of the disease when a parent becomes sick. This new study, we hope, provides the evidence needed to massively scale up the use of TB preventive treatment among those individuals at risk of developing TB.”

TB preventive therapy has made enormous strides in recent years: new shorter treatment regimens can clear TB infection before it develops into active disease with a once-weekly treatment over twelve weeks, called 3HP, or a daily treatment over one month, called 1HP. And a series of negotiations led by Unitaid, the Aurum Institute, and partners have reduced the price of treatment by more than 70% since 2017. 

About one-quarter of the world’s population is infected with TB and at risk of developing active disease, which causes severe illness. The World Health Organization recommends TB preventive treatment for those at highest risk of infection, including people living with HIV and household contacts of people with TB. The first United Nations High-Level Meeting in 2018 set targets to accelerate efforts to end TB as a global health threat, including a goal to reach at least 30 million people with TB preventive treatment. 

Only the target to reach people living with HIV was attained, and a corresponding decrease in the number of TB cases and deaths occurred within this population during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, TB cases and deaths increased in all other populations over the same period. 

“The imperative for TB prevention is clear,” said Vincent Bretin, Director of Results at Unitaid. “This cost-effectiveness analysis proves that preemptively reaching all at-risk individuals – even when it requires the logistical hurdles of going into communities to find those who may not be actively seeking care – is not just ethically sound. It is a smart investment capable of making an enormous impact on the fight to end TB worldwide.” 

The study found that providing 3HP through contact tracing, in which the household members of a person diagnosed with TB are identified, assessed, and treated, could yield an estimated 13% cumulative reduction in the number of contacts developing TB through 2035 and an estimated 35% cumulative reduction in deaths.  

Among children under five, the combination of 3HP with contact tracing showed to have a profound impact on the child TB burden overall, helping to drive up the identification of active disease in addition to preventing new infections. The impact on missing cases among this population was so substantial that the intervention would save more lives by treating TB disease and infection than the number of new infections prevented. 

The study is the first to provide comparable evidence on the cost-effectiveness of short-course TB preventive treatment for people living with HIV and household contacts in three age groups (< 5, 5-14, and ≥ 15 years old), using consistent methods for all four populations. This provides a clear justification to support policy change and implementation of the life-saving approach where coverage is lagging.

“At the moment, too many family members of people diagnosed with TB are slipping through the cracks and too many lives are being lost,” said Tess Ryckman, faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study. “To finally make a significant dent in the TB epidemic, we need stronger recommendations in favor of TB prevention for household contacts along with a significant boost in resources. The stakes are too high not to act now.” 

Despite the cost-effectiveness of TB preventive treatment, the researchers note that the absolute cost of scale up will be substantial. External funding—with an explicit plan to bridge to domestic support as TB burden declines—will be needed, as well as a further decrease in the price of the drug rifapentine, the key cost driver in short TB prevention regimens.

NOTES FOR EDITORS: 

The analysis is based on modelling of 29 countries representing a range of income levels, geographic regions, and HIV and TB incidence expected to be applicable to other countries with high burdens of TB. 

Burundi, Bangladesh, Brazil, Congo DRC, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Indonesia, India, Kenya, Cambodia, Liberia, Lesotho, Mongolia, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, Pakistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Eswatini, Thailand, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe. 

Information on the Unitaid-funded IMPAACT4TB Project

The IMPAACT4TB project has been working towards delivering transformational change in the accessibility and use of TB preventive treatment since 2018. Funded by Unitaid and led by the Aurum Institute with a consortium of partners, the project seeks to establish 3HP and 1HP as affordable, quality-assured, less toxic therapies suitable for wide introduction in countries most affected by TB.

Since its inception, IMPAACT4TB has: 

  • Reduced the price of 3HP from US$72 in 2017 to US$14.25 today
  • Increased procurement of 3HP from 35,000 patient courses in 2017 to more than 4 million in 2022 
  • Improved supply security by bringing two new generic manufacturers into the market
  • Helped surpass UN HLM prevention targets for people living with HIV 
  • Generated the missing evidence to enable people with HIV on first-line treatments to safely take short-course TB preventive treatment 

By June 2022, 78 countries were using new short-course TB preventive treatments. 

Figures on TB preventive treatment

According to the World Health Organization’s 2022 Global TB Report, the total number of people living with HIV and household contacts of people diagnosed with TB who were provided with TB preventive treatment increased from 1 million in 2015 to 3.6 million in 2019. There was a significant decrease in 2020 to 3.2 million, probably reflecting disruptions to health services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The majority of all groups receiving TB preventive treatment are people living with HIV. TB preventive treatment among household contacts continues to represent a significant gap.

Contacts for the media 

Kanya Ndaki, KNdaki@auruminstitute.org, +27 83 298 6100

Hervé Verhoosel, verhooselh@unitaid.who.int, +33 6 22 59 73 54

About Unitaid 

Unitaid is a global health agency engaged in finding innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases more quickly, cheaply and effectively, in low- and middle-income countries. Its work includes funding initiatives to address major diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, as well as HIV co-infections and co-morbidities such as cervical cancer and hepatitis C, and cross-cutting areas, such as fever management. Unitaid is hosted by the World Health Organization.

About the Aurum Institute 

The Aurum Institute is a proudly African organisation working to advance health science and innovation to create a healthier world for future generations. We partner with governments, the private sector and civil society to design and deliver high-quality care and treatment to people in developing communities. https://www.auruminstitute.org

Better health solutions

Unitaid’s investment case 2023-2027

250,000 patients to benefit from free access to short-course TB prevention treatment across seven countries

Support from global consortium will expand access to shorter TB prevention options, help advance efforts towards TB elimination.  

Johannesburg – The Unitaid-funded IMPAACT4TB Consortium, led by the Aurum Institute, announced today that it will provide 250,000 patient courses of short course rifapentine-based preventive treatment regimens to seven countries to help prevent tuberculosis (TB). The patient courses will include the three-month 3HP regimen, and the even shorter 1HP, that is only taken for 28 days. This contribution is part of the Consortium’s ongoing efforts to end TB and improve global health outcomes. 

The seven countries set to benefit from this initiative are Brazil, Haiti, India, the Maldives, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia. This supply of rifapentine-based preventive treatment regimens is expected to contribute significantly to the global effort to reduce the incidence of TB, which continues to be a major public health challenge worldwide. 

“Despite commitments to end tuberculosis as a global epidemic by 2030, the disease remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing around 4,400 people every day,” said Prof Gavin Churchyard, CEO of Aurum Institute and the principal investigator of the IMPAACT4TB project. “TB prevention is a cornerstone of any effort to eliminate TB, and we hope that these 250,000 patient courses will contribute to countries’ efforts to finally make TB a disease of the past.”  

About one quarter of the world’s population is infected with a form of TB that causes no symptoms and is not contagious. Without treatment, 5% to 10% of those infected will develop active TB, which causes severe illness and can be transmitted from person to person through the air. TB preventive treatment regimens lower the risk of progression to TB in people at risk, including children, pregnant women and people living with HIV.  

In recent years, new and shorter rifapentine-based TB preventive treatment regimens have been recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and are becoming increasingly available. Currently, over four million patient courses are being manufactured annually. These shorter regimens are associated with higher treatment adherence, completion, and outcomes. In fact, people taking shorter regimens are up to three times more likely to complete their course than those on longer regimens—leading to better outcomes and more lives saved.  

In many high-burden TB countries, these new short-course TB preventive treatment regimens are modelled to be cost-effective for both people living with HIV and household contacts of all ages, regardless of whether contact investigation is already in place.  

“The seven countries receiving these regimens have expressed their readiness not only to identify underserved and at-risk populations and ensure they receive these newer regimens, but also to invest in strengthening systems around contact tracing and learning lessons on how to improve TB preventive treatment uptake and coverage,” said Dr Philippe Duneton, Executive Director of Unitaid.  

These patient courses consist of shorter rifapentine-based regimens, including two treatment options: 3HP, a three-month oral treatment taken once weekly, and 1HP, a 28-day oral treatment taken once daily. Access to rifapentine-based regimens has been established in 71 countries, with over three million patient courses purchased to date. However, despite this progress, key groups and areas are still behind target. 

The IMPAACT4TB Consortium’s provision of the patient courses, which was made possible due to cost savings achieved over the past five years, is part of the Consortium’s broader strategy to reduce the cost of rifapentine. Among other things, by working with global partners and manufacturers, the Consortium helped significantly reduce the access price of a three-month patient course of weekly rifapentine and isoniazid, from US$72 to US$14.25. 

In addition to providing the patient courses, the IMPAACT4TB Consortium will also provide technical assistance to countries in their implementation efforts, including identifying populations that could benefit from TB prevention, and determining the most appropriate regimen for them. The project actively advocates for universal access to TB prevention tools through their #RightToPreventTB campaign to raise awareness within communities about effective prevention regimens. 

In 2021 alone, close to 1.6 million people died from TB, while around 10.6 million people fell ill from the disease. Currently, the world is not on track to achieve the TB prevention targets set at the United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB held in 2018.  While significant progress has been made in providing TB prevention to people living with HIV, the number of household contacts receiving TB preventive treatment remains unacceptably low. In fact, the current progress towards the target of providing tuberculosis preventive treatment (TPT) to 30 million people by 2022 is only at 42%, indicating a critical need for stronger efforts to scale up TPT for household contacts. 

Notes to Editors 

About IMPAACT4TB 

The Increasing Market and Public Health Outcomes Through Scaling Up Affordable Access Models of Short Course Preventive Therapy For TB (IMPAACT4TB) consortium is funded by Unitaid and led by the Aurum Institute and comprised of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Johns Hopkins University, KNCV the Dutch TB Foundation and the Treatment Action Group (TAG).  

People living with HIV (PLHIV) and child contacts are at highest risk of contracting TB. The initial IMPAACT4TB grant looked at the safety of co-administering and dosing of 3HP and DTG and, once that was ascertained, the project moved on to introduce and rollout 3HP as an additional TPT option among PLHIV and household contacts of TB patients in 12 low-middle income countries, namely: Brazil, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Indonesia, South Africa, India, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Tanzania.  

Although the project was focused in these 12 countries, efforts were also made to ensure wider access to 3HP and catalysed orders for these regimens in 58 additional countries to date. The grant also funded studies on the use of 3HP in ART-naive patients on DTG based regimens (DOLPHIN TOO), dosing of 3HP in children from 0-2 years (TBTC Study 35), improved TPT service delivery as well as community advocacy for improved TPT policy and uptake within project countries. The Consortium will continue to collaborate globally to advance TB research and improve access to life-saving preventive treatments.  

About Unitaid 

Unitaid is a global health agency engaged in finding innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases more quickly, cheaply, and effectively, in low- and middle-income countries. Its work includes funding initiatives to address major diseases such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, as well as HIV co-infections and co-morbidities including advanced HIV disease, cervical cancer, and hepatitis C, and cross-cutting areas, such as fever management. Unitaid is now applying its expertise to address challenges in advancing new therapies and diagnostics for the COVID-19 pandemic. Unitaid is hosted by the World Health Organization. For more information, visit www.unitaid.org

About Aurum Institute 

The Aurum Institute is a proudly African organisation working to advance health science and innovation to create a healthier world for future generations. We partner with governments, the private sector and civil society to design and deliver high-quality care and treatment to people in developing communities. https://www.auruminstitute.org

Media contact:

For more information and media requests:

Maggie Zander

Communications Officer

Mobile: +41 79 593 17 74

Email: zanderm@unitaid.who.int

World TB Day: Unitaid joins WHO’s call to action for shorter and more effective regimens for all people suffering from drug-resistant TB

Geneva – World TB Day, 24 March, marks the day in 1882 when the bacteria that causes tuberculosis was discovered. In 2023, 131 years after that discovery, TB remains a leading cause of death from infectious disease, surpassed only recently by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, Unitaid is joining WHO and other leading global health actors in calling for rapid adoption of regimens for drug-resistant strains of TB that more effectively cure patients while drastically reducing the time required for treatment.

TB elimination efforts have long been stymied by insufficient funding, attention, and political will, leaving healthcare systems to rely on ineffective diagnostic methods, outdated treatments, and a critical lack of awareness. These dangerous gaps have created a space in which drug-resistant strains of TB could develop and spread, largely unchecked.

In 2021 alone, 10.6 million people fell ill with TB and half a million of them developed a strain of the disease that does not respond to some, many – and in severe cases, most – of the drugs available to treat it.

Reinvigorated research into new medicines and regimens to treat TB paved the way for the development and testing of several novel regimens over the past decade, helping advance improved treatment options for people suffering from drug-resistant TB.

Photo caption: When Ramaz checked into the hospital with XDR-TB, he didn't expect to survive. New medicines changed everything. Photo credit: Mzia Lekveishvili/Unitaid

Photo caption: When Ramaz checked into the hospital with XDR-TB, he didn’t expect to survive. New medicines changed everything. Photo credit: Mzia Lekveishvili/Unitaid

When Ramaz was 34 years old, he checked into a hospital in Georgia with extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), a strain of the bacteria that had grown resistant to all available medicines used to treat TB. It was 2016. He had been in treatment for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) since 2010 but had to stop treatment twice because of the severe and toxic side effects it caused him.

Drug-resistant TB takes a heavy toll on patients, communities, and healthcare systems. Conventional treatments used at the time could last up to two years, cause terrible side effects like permanent hearing loss and kidney failure, require thousands of pills and painful injections, and cost several thousands of dollars per person. XDR-TB is particularly severe and, until recently, nearly incurable.

“I never thought I could survive this disease,” said Ramaz, who thought he was saying goodbye to his wife and daughters when he entered the hospital that day.

But new medicines for treating TB – the first to be developed in almost half a century – helped enable Ramaz’s remarkable recovery. He was treated through Unitaid’s endTB program, which is working to develop and advance a number of shorter, more effective, less toxic, injectable-free, and more affordable treatment regimens for drug-resistant TB.

TB treatment requires a combination of antibiotics, so new drugs need to go through rigorous testing to prove their safety and efficacy when used alongside other medicines. The endTB program – Unitaid’s largest investment and longest running initiative to date – began as a commitment to generate gold-standard evidence to back up the use of two novel drugs – bedaquiline and delamanid – and improve treatment options.

As part of the program, a massive observational study conducted across 17 countries helped shape a WHO recommendation for a nine-month, all oral treatment regimen for MDR-TB. These guidelines from the WHO are a critical step in ushering in changes in country-level TB programs, and introduction of the treatments through endTB helped enable rapid uptake. Later this year, endTB clinical trial results will provide critical insight to guide the use of new and repurposed medicines across diverse populations, including people in treatment for HIV, diabetes, and hepatitis C, as well as in pregnant women and children, who are often excluded from studies.

These new developments come at a time of relative progress in TB, after decades of stagnation. The emergence of bedquiline and delamanid were followed by additional drug developments, including pretomanid, which contributed another highly effective treatment option to the fight against TB.

“We have seen a complete revolution in treatment over the past decade,” says Dr Philippe Duneton, Executive Director of Unitaid. “Before this work began, MDR-TB treatment was not only long and difficult – it was largely ineffective. Today, we’re seeing people make complete recoveries in a fraction of the time, even for people infected with severely resistant strains of TB.”

Photo caption: Dr Barbakadze is one of many doctors involved in Unitaid's endTB program who has witnessed the impact of new TB medicines on severely ill patients. Photo credit: Mzia Lekveishvili/Unitaid

Photo caption: Dr Barbakadze is one of many doctors involved in Unitaid’s endTB program who has witnessed the impact of new TB medicines on severely ill patients. Photo credit: Mzia Lekveishvili/Unitaid

“Nobody thought Ramaz would survive,” says Dr Ketevan Barbakadze, who heads up the MDR/XDR-TB department in Tbilisi where Ramaz received treatment. “And we have plenty of similar stories.”

She says the introduction of these new medicines has had a true “Lazarus effect,” referring to the rare phenomenon when a person who seems to be dead suddenly shows signs of life again.

But despite significant improvements in patient outcomes observed with the new treatments, many people living in countries with the highest rates of TB remain without easy access to these medicines.

The first-ever United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB held in 2018 set bold five-year goals to reduce the burden of disease worldwide. But efforts are falling far short of reaching the target 1.5 million people affected by drug-resistant TB by 2022 and disruptions and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to reverse 20 years of progress made against TB.

New treatments, though significantly more affordable than previous, less effective regimens, remain in the hundreds of dollars per patient – a considerable expense for countries with limited resources. And the cost of treatment goes beyond medicines – people with TB are often so ill they cannot work, making it challenging to cover their living and treatment expenses.

Diagnosing TB and identifying drug-resistance is also complex. A combination of inadequate or unavailable tools, alongside a lack of awareness about the disease, keeps treatment out of reach for millions of people with TB.

The WHO’s Call to Action advocates for investment and attention to urgently roll out improved treatments, with a focus on ensuring efforts are supported by solutions that improve the quality of care and fight against growing TB drug-resistance.

Unitaid remains committed to efforts to end TB, by leveraging US$250 million in investments to improve treatments and support adherence, facilitate detection, enable access to high-quality preventive medicine, and ensure children, pregnant women, people living with HIV, and all those most affected can access care.

Related publication:

Media contact:

For more information and media requests:

Maggie Zander

Communications Officer

Mobile: +41 79 593 17 74

Email: zanderm@unitaid.who.int

Unitaid to address intellectual property-related barriers for broader access to health technologies with new call for proposals 

Submissions are welcomed until 1 February 2023 at 12:00 (noon) CET.

Intellectual property rights are an important incentivizing mechanism to accelerate the development of innovations to respond to global health challenges. But while they can be effective in stimulating and rewarding innovation in global health, they can also contribute to inequitable access to new products, as has been increasingly recognized over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

TRIPS flexibilities – legal mechanisms allowing countries to overcome or reduce the potential negative impact of patents in response to specific public health needs – are intended to address equity barriers.

Unitaid seeks to fund projects that will support the use of TRIPS flexibilities and other solutions to prevent or remove unwarranted intellectual property barriers. Unitaid is particularly interested in ensuring the availability and affordability of health products for HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and other diseases and conditions outlined in the 2023-2027 Strategy.

Without intervention, inequitable access will only widen, and populations that are already vulnerable and marginalized will face increasing risk of disease, poverty, reduced quality of life and even death. This work will contribute to enhancing equity between countries as it benefits low-income and, importantly, middle-income countries that are typically not included in voluntary licensing agreements.

Through this call for proposals, Unitaid aims to improve access to health products of public health importance, with a particular focus on affordability, increased supply and adoption, and a diversification of the supply base in low- and middle-income countries.

Learn more about this latest funding opportunity here

Media contact:

For more information and media requests:

Maggie Zander

Communications officer

M: +41 79 593 17 74

zanderm@unitaid.who.int

G20 health ministers appeal for more TB funding and deliver six key actions to strengthen the global health architecture

28 October, Geneva – World health leaders launched a call to action on financing tuberculosis (TB) today in Bali, Indonesia, where they met ahead of the G20 Summit to discuss strengthening global health architecture.

G20 members recognize that lack of adequate financing remains the top obstacle to ending the TB epidemic, and stress that global investments must increase fourfold by 2030 to meet the targets set for ending this preventable and treatable disease.

The call to action coincides with the recent launch of the World Health Organization’s 2022 Global TB Report, which laid bare the devastating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on global efforts to control TB.

The report showed an increase for the first time in many years in the number of people falling ill with TB and drug-resistant TB, along with a decline in 2021 in global spending on essential TB services.

At the same time, G20 members underscored the critical role Unitaid plays in the TB response as the world’s largest multilateral donor to TB research and development, striving for equitable access to life-saving diagnostics and treatment.

Unitaid has contributed to the global efforts by supporting research related to multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) treatment, paediatric TB diagnosis, child-friendly formulations of TB and MDR-TB drugs, TB preventive therapy (the 3HP regimen), and digital adherence technologies. The agency is investing an additional US$ 30 million, aiming to increase TB detection and help to find the missing millions of cases.

Following discussions on strengthening the global health architecture and pandemic prevention, preparedness and response , G20 health ministers delivered six key actions for consideration during the G20 Leaders’ Summit in mid-November.

Unitaid, as a key player for equitable access to health innovation, remains committed to help build global health resilience and response capacity against future pandemic threats.

As co-leader of the ACT-Accelerator’s therapeutics pillar, Unitaid has contributed to substantial progress in the COVID-19 response, demonstrating its unique capability to transform markets and help countries and communities achieve an enabling environment for product adoption.

“Responding to the COVID-19 health crisis, Unitaid and partners have improved access to critical oxygen supplies and facilitated adoption of life-saving therapeutics alongside vital diagnostic tests. But this is not the end of it, much work remains to be done,” Unitaid Executive Director Dr Philippe Duneton said. “We must focus on building resilience at the market and country level in light of unpredictable and fast evolving scenarios. COVID-19 has shown us that reaching equitable global access to medical countermeasures requires a continuum between pandemic preparedness and response efforts.”

 

Access more information on the Call to Action on Financing for TB Response here.

Access the G20 Health Ministers Communiqué here.

For more information:

Sarah Mascheroni

mascheronisa@unitaid.who.int

 

For media requests:

Maggie Zander

Communications officer

M: +41 79 593 17 74

zanderm@unitaid.who.int