L’innovation en santé s’invite en marge de la 6e Conférence de reconstitution des ressources du Fonds mondial

Lyon – The Global Fund and Unitaid are celebrating innovation today, at a special gathering on the eve of the Global Fund’s 6th Replenishment Conference.

And for good reason: Without innovations supported and led by both organisations, it would take an estimated three extra years for the Global Fund to achieve its intended impact. Moreover, innovations supported by Unitaid and the Global Fund are projected to reach more than 100 million people every year from 2021 through 2023.

Tuesday’s gathering drew key figures from the global health community, countries, civil society, and donors including France, a major financier of global health. Speakers emphasized innovation’s essential role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Global Fund and Unitaid have been working closely with countries and partners to ensure that the best innovations reach everyone, especially the most vulnerable. While Unitaid makes health products more suitable, effective, and affordable, the Global Fund and countries implement them on a large scale. Co-funded projects are introducing new-generation insecticide sprays and innovative bed nets to stop malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

“Innovation is essential if we are to end the epidemics,” said Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund. “We need to devise better diagnostics, prevention, treatment and delivery models and get them quickly to the people who need them.”

A Unitaid pilot proved that millions of paediatric malaria cases in the Sahel region of Africa could be prevented with four doses of oral medication per child. The Global Fund responded to the successful pilot by widely implementing the prevention method.  Seasonal malaria chemoprevention is now protecting small children from malaria in 12 Sahel countries.

“Innovation is at the heart of Unitaid, and we have always worked hand in hand with the Global Fund,”Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora said. “Together we have a moral obligation to guarantee that these innovations, when widely implemented, will improve the lives of all those in need.”

Together, #StepUpTheFight !

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De meilleurs médicaments contre la tuberculose pour les enfants

Unitaid invests in better, safer and simpler treatments and preventive therapy for multidrug-resistant TB in children

Geneva – Stellenbosch University and Unitaid have signed a US$ 18.9 million grant agreement to develop child-friendly treatments and preventive therapy against multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).

Developing and evaluating child-friendly treatments and assessing regimens to stop the disease in its tracks before it develops into active disease are expected to go a long way in reducing the burden of this dangerous form of TB.

“This project holds great promise in the fight against superbugs and is critical if we are to protect the future of thousands of children exposed to this dangerous form of TB,” said Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora.

More than 95 percent of children with MDR-TB do not currently receive treatment. And those who do, are treated with regimens that are long, bad tasting, toxic, often causing severe side effects, such as irreversible hearing loss, and composed mostly of adult tablets that must be crushed.

Estimates also show that as many as 2 million children are infected with drug-resistant strains of TB bacteria but have not yet progressed to active disease. A lack of high-quality evidence limits access to treatments that could prevent TB disease from developing in most of these children.

Better Evidence and Formulations for Improved MDR-TB Treatment for Children (BENEFIT Kids) project, signed on Friday and running through 2022, will increase access to quality-assured MDR-TB medicines that are adapted for children, who have been neglected in the global response. The project aims to achieve this by:

  • bringing child-friendly formulations for MDR-TB treatment and preventive therapy that taste better, are of appropriate strength and can be given to young children who cannot swallow tablets
  • strengthening evidence on optimal dosing, safety, efficacy, acceptability and costs of these MDR-TB medications for kids, an important step in creating policies for their use
  • shaping the market for these better formulations for kids

“Children have been largely neglected to date in the global response to MDR-TB and they deserve better.  We are excited that, through Unitaid’s investment in this innovative project, Stellenbosch University and its partners can contribute to addressing this inequity by improving access for children to better, more child-friendly MDR-TB treatment and prevention,” said Project Lead Dr. Anthony Garcia-Prats, Stellenbosch University and the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

The project will not only protect thousands of children from this life-threatening disease but also save millions of dollars for health systems by averting treatment costs for active disease.

The project will be implemented in three countries: South Africa, India and the Philippines. Stellenbosch University will work with partners TB Alliance, University of California San Francisco, De La Salle University Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, BJ Medical College, Uppsala University and Chiang Mai University.

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The Hummingbird. Unitaid News – September 2019 (en anglais seulement)

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The Hummingbird. Unitaid News – August 2019 (en anglais seulement)

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Aider les patients à accéder au traitement contre la tuberculose et à le suivre jusqu’au bout

Tests de haute technologie pour la tuberculose pharmacorésistante

Unitaid investit dans des technologies innovantes dans le domaine des traitements de la tuberculose

Geneva – The KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation and Unitaid signed a US$ 13.9 million grant agreement on Tuesday to increase the use of smart pillboxes and mobile technology, aiming to help patients adhere to their medicines and raise the world’s plateauing cure rates for TB.

“This project takes a familiar device, the mobile phone, and turns it into an innovative disease-fighting tool,” Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora said. “So many more people will be able to adhere to the long treatment and return to good health with the support of this technology.”

The ASCENT project, starting this month and running through 2022, will pilot three types of devices and create a global market and implementation plan for them. The devices are:

  • pillboxes that send a message to a monitoring clinic every time the patient opens it up to take their medicine.
  • a video application that helps patients film themselves taking their medicine, and then sends the video to the clinic.
  • an application that helps patients send an SMS to the clinic every time they take their dose.

The project will be implemented in five countries: Ethiopia, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania and Ukraine. KNCV will work with partners The Aurum Institute, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and PATH.

One of the difficulties in curing tuberculosis is the long treatment. Patients have to take medicines anywhere from six months to two years. After a few months of treatment, many patients feel better and stop taking their medicine. As a result, the illness returns, and the bacteria gets an opportunity to develop resistance to the tuberculosis drugs.

“KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation is excited and honored to lead the Unitaid-funded ASCENT project,” said Kitty van Weezenbeek, executive director of KNCV. “We look forward to working with national TB programs, patient representatives and our consortium partners to bring digital adherence technology to scale.”

Unitaid is investing in a host of new TB interventions, including:

  • new drug formulations for children who have multidrug-resistant TB
  • diagnosis through gene sequencing, a new technology that can analyze the genes of a patient’s particular tuberculosis bacteria and determine which drugs will work the best against it.

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