Nouvelles subventions d’Unitaid dédiées aux enfants atteints de tuberculose

Geneva – Unitaid’s Executive Board has approved two new grants worth a combined US$ 43.7 million to prevent tuberculosis in vulnerable populations, with an emphasis on curbing the devastating effects of TB on children.

The grants join two others approved in September to fund a US$ 117 million slate of new projects aimed at fighting the world’s leading infectious killer. The announcement coincides with a Unitaid event being held at the 48th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Guadalajara, Mexico.

“Every day, more than 200 children under the age of 15 die needlessly from TB, which is 200 deaths too many,” said Lelio Marmora, Unitaid Executive Director. “Integrating TB treatment into existing HIV and maternal and child health services will reach more children with life-saving treatment sooner.”

One of the two newly approved grants will provide US$ 36.3 million to improve treatment services, and the market, for child-friendly TB medicines, in India and nine African countries. Project leader Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) will work to reach undiagnosed children by incorporating TB screening into services for HIV, nutrition, and maternal and child health. If the project is eventually scaled up globally, EGPAF estimates that over 500,000 lives could be saved over the five years following the project.

“Children with TB represent one of the most neglected and vulnerable populations in the world,” said Chip Lyons, EGPAF President and CEO. “EGPAF is proud to partner with Unitaid on this project that will expand our existing HIV prevention and treatment services to implement more effective diagnosis, treatment and care for children with active and latent TB.”

The second of the newly approved grants provides US$ 7.4 million to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global TB Programme as it works to improve the diagnosis and treatment of paediatric, latent and multidrug-resistant TB in high-burden countries. WHO will ensure that evidence generated from Unitaid investments is quickly put into global practice.

“The WHO Global TB Programme applauds Unitaid for this unprecedented move to enhance collaboration with WHO to combat TB,” said Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of WHO’s Global TB Programme. “Through this grant we will ensure that all TB-funded projects are structured and monitored in a way that outcomes are rapidly translated into innovative policies. I am particularly pleased with the decision to support work on latent TB infection, an orphan area which urgently requires generating stronger evidence for wider implementation.”

In 2015, 1.8 million people died of TB, about one person every 18 seconds. Without treatment, 45 percent of people with TB will die, as well as nearly all HIV-positive people with TB. WHO estimates that one million children developed TB in 2015, but more than half did not receive the diagnosis and treatment they needed, mostly those living in the poorest and most vulnerable households.

The pair of TB grants approved in September went to the Aurum Institute in South Africa (US$ 58.8 million) and the University of Bordeaux (US$ 14.6 million). The Aurum Institute will work with partners in a dozen countries in Africa, Asia and South America to expand short-course preventive therapy for two groups at especially high risk for TB: people living with HIV and children under five years old. The University of Bordeaux will concentrate on widening the availability of childhood TB diagnosis in six African countries and Cambodia, using fast, state-of-the-art tests that can be performed even in small local clinics.

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Groundbreaking, web-based pathway to guide innovators as they develop new TB diagnostics and adjunct technologies

Guadalajara, Mexico – Global health organizations are proud to announce the launch of the very first, web-based pathway for tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics and adjunct technologies.

The TB Diagnostics Pathway is a common good resource that will be owned by everyone in the TB community and regularly updated.  The site was conceived as a tool to help innovators develop their ideas from research to roll-out, offering guidance on the critical activities to follow and right partnerships to pursue. The TB Diagnostics Pathway will help standardize research, commercialization and roll-out procedures to speed the introduction of promising, new TB diagnostics and adjunct technologies.

Among the site’s sponsors, on hand for the launch at the Accelerator for Impact’s (a4i) 1st Innovators & Adopters Workshop, are FIND, McGill International TB Centre, Stop TB Partnership, Unitaid, and the World Health Organization. The workshop takes place on the sidelines of the 48th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Guadalajara, Mexico.

“Stop TB Partnership is excited by how a4i has brought all of our friends and partners, from advocates, communities, country decision-makers and stakeholders, innovators, and multilateral and technical agencies together to solve one of our major challenges,” said Lucica Ditiu, Executive Director of Stop TB Partnership. “Innovators need support to successfully leap across the ‘valleys of death’ that exist in the TB space, and in global health overall when it comes to rolling-out new products and technologies.”

“The TB Diagnostics Pathway is complemented by the Diagnostic Pipeline Tracker, which maps the status of diverse TB diagnostic solutions,” said Catharina Boehme, CEO of FIND. “These support tools are instrumental in helping to guide development and further innovation.”

“We know that promising innovations need to navigate a long, complex pathway to reach patients who really need them. The TB Diagnostics Pathway aims to demystify this pathway and support innovators in navigating it,” said Madhukar Pai, Associate Director of the McGill International TB Centre.  “New TB tools are critical for TB control, and our TB Centre is pleased to have contributed to this excellent resource that will help innovators,” said Marcel Behr, Director of the McGill International TB Centre.

“Accelerating access to innovation is central to Unitaid,” said Lelio Marmora, Executive Director of Unitaid. “We recognize the need for better diagnostics to expand TB treatment, and applaud this initiative that brings together many key partners in a common effort.”

“Starting treatment for any disease without a confirmed diagnosis is like using a candle to find a way through a dark labyrinth,” said Mario Raviglione, Director of the Global TB Programme of the World Health Organization (WHO). Reaching the targets of the End TB Strategy requires universal access to diagnosis of all forms of TB, including drug-resistant TB.”  “The TB diagnostic pipeline has undergone a revolution in the last 10 years but requires much increased investment to avoid stagnation,” said Karin Weyer, Coordinator of the Global TB Programme of the WHO. The TB Diagnostics Pathway will be an excellent resource for innovators to accelerate research efforts.”

Produits de santé de qualité garantie : améliorer leur accès et les porter à grande échelle

Georgia on the frontlines of tackling drug-resistant tuberculosis — a photo story

Georgia continues to struggle with tuberculosis (TB), today’s leading infectious disease killer, and its drug-resistant forms. The homeless, unemployed, migrants, prisoners, and people who excessively consume alcohol are among the most affected. But the good news is that the number of people suffering from drug-resistant TB has dropped over the past few years largely due to the arrival of new medicines. The first drugs to be developed in almost half a century — bedaquiline and delamanid — now offer the opportunity to treat multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) more quickly and effectively.

 Read the full photo story

Georgia on the frontlines of tackling drug-resistant tuberculosis — a photo story (en anglais seulement)

Georgia on the frontlines of tackling drug-resistant tuberculosis — a photo story

Georgia continues to struggle with tuberculosis (TB), today’s leading infectious disease killer, and its drug-resistant forms. The homeless, unemployed, migrants, prisoners, and people who excessively consume alcohol are among the most affected. But the good news is that the number of people suffering from drug-resistant TB has dropped over the past few years largely due to the arrival of new medicines. The first drugs to be developed in almost half a century — bedaquiline and delamanid — now offer the opportunity to treat multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) more quickly and effectively.

Renforcer les services de lutte contre la tuberculose pour les enfants

WHO prequalifies key treatment for children with tuberculosis

Geneva – The World Health Organization (WHO) has prequalified a new formulation of a medicine critical for treatment of tuberculosis (TB) in children.

The fixed dose combination (FDC) tablet, manufactured by Macleods Pharmaceuticals Limited, contains two medicines in one pill – 75 mg of rifampicin + 50 mg isoniazid.  Child-friendly TB fixed-dose combinations were developed with support from Unitaid through the STEP-TB project spearheaded by the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development.

WHO’s inclusion of the medicine in its Prequalification list means that the product has been found to meet international standards of quality, safety and efficacy, and will rapidly expand access to effective TB treatment for children globally. It is available for procurement through the Global Drug Facility, which supports the procurement of TB medicines for United Nations programmes, international procurement agencies and national procurement entities.

Since 2006, Unitaid has provided support to WHO’s Prequalification Programme (PQ) and is its largest funder. WHO PQ activities are central to Unitaid’s strategy in assuring the highest quality medicines and diagnostics are on the market for procurement by donor organizations and country governments.

Find out more:

“WHO Prequalifies key treatment for children with TB” – WHO website

 

 

Unitaid Board approves new grants to prevent tuberculosis in high-risk populations and increase TB diagnosis in children

Geneva – Unitaid’s Executive Board has approved two new grants worth a combined  US$ 74 million to prevent the spread of tuberculosis (TB), the world’s leading infectious killer, in populations most at risk of contracting the disease and to increase TB diagnosis in children.

Through the first grant, Unitaid is investing US$ 59 million to ensure that people with latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) – who are infected with the TB bacteria, but do not have symptoms and are not infectious – have access to new, shorter preventive TB treatment. The four-year grant will target people most vulnerable to developing active TB, including people living with HIV and children under age five.

“The detection and treatment of people with latent TB is an important part of fighting this disease and ultimately ending TB,” said Lelio Marmora, Unitaid Executive Director. “The shorter TB preventive therapy has the potential to be the game changer in the fight to end TB.”

About one third of the world’s population is infected with the TB bacteria. Only a small percentage become sick with TB, but people with weak immune systems, such as people living with HIV, are at considerably higher risk of falling ill. A person living with HIV is about 26 times more likely to develop active TB.

South Africa’s Aurum Institute, which is spearheading the TB prevention project, will work with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Johns Hopkins University, and the Global Drug Facility – Stop TB Partnership, to implement the project in 12 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia with high burdens of TB or TB/HIV. The target groups will receive a quality-assured, affordable short-course TB preventive therapy known as 3HP, to be taken weekly for a duration of three months.

“TB infection remains the seedbed of the TB epidemic. Scaling up new, safer, shorter regimens for the programmatic management of latent TB infection has the potential to accelerate progress to ending the TB epidemic,” said Professor Gavin Churchyard, Group CEO of the Aurum Institute.

The second grant totaling US$ 15 million aims to improve the diagnosis of TB in children, particularly those also affected by HIV, malnutrition and severe pneumonia. The University of Bordeaux will work with health partners and academic institutes in France, Cambodia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia to implement the TB-SPEED (Strengthening Pediatric TB Services for Enhanced Early Detection) project.

Critical progress has been achieved recently with the launch of the first child-friendly TB medicine as a result of a Unitaid-funded project implemented by the TB Alliance and WHO. However, the TB detection rate remains low, due to challenges with diagnosing TB in children as they are less likely to produce sputum, the main laboratory sample to detect TB.

TB-SPEED proposes an easier way of detecting TB in children through rapid battery-operated molecular tests in local health centers, optimized chest radiography, and simpler specimen collection. “We are hopeful that TB-SPEED will succeed in preventing children from dying of TB by increasing TB diagnosis and access to treatment,” said Mr Marmora.

“While tuberculosis remains one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, it is a great  opportunity for the University of Bordeaux to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goal of ending the TB epidemic by 2030”, said Dr Tunon de Lara, President of the University of Bordeaux.

 Unitaid

Unitaid invests in new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and malaria more quickly, affordably and effectively. It brings the power of new medical discoveries to the people who most need them. And it helps set the stage for the large-scale introduction of new health products by collaborating with governments and funding partners such as PEPFAR and the Global Fund.