Geneva – The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) and Unitaid signed a new collaboration framework to advance equitable access to high-quality and affordable health products and innovations in low- and middle-income countries over the next three years.

“To end AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, everyone must have unimpeded and equitable access to prevention, testing, and treatment,” said Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund. “By strengthening our partnership with Unitaid, we are better equipped to tackle challenges of affordability, quality, supply and delivery, ensuring all individuals receive quality-assured health products. Together, we will continue building climate-resilient health systems, promoting health innovations and fostering regional manufacturing, paving the way toward a world free from the three diseases.”

“In the face of rising global inequality, health partners must constantly strive to make the most of donor funds in order to reach as many people as possible,” said Philippe Duneton, Executive Director of Unitaid. “For nearly 20 years, the Global Fund and Unitaid have been an example of what can be accomplished by working together. With this new agreement, we commit to increasing our efforts to support countries to introduce innovative, cost-effective health products at scale, strengthen regional manufacturing and procurement, and introduce climate-smart health solutions.”

The partnership between the Global Fund and Unitaid is an integral part of the global health architecture, with each organization playing strategic and complementary roles in shaping global markets for HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria products. By fast-tracking innovative and cost-effective health products through upstream Unitaid investments and then taking them to scale through the Global Fund, our combined approach helps reach global targets on HIV, TB and malaria faster, and contributes to increased return on investment – money that can be used elsewhere to save more lives.

As per the new agreement, the Global Fund and Unitaid will increase collaboration to identify promising health products in development and accelerate approvals, engage with suppliers to secure availability and affordability of products as they go to market, and support countries to introduce new products and mobilize demand.

For TB, a key area of collaboration for Global Fund and Unitaid is to support countries in preparing for the implementation and scale up of new TB diagnostic tools, including by building demand generation strategies, and to compile accurate demand forecasts in new classes of TB diagnostics to guide potential market shaping interventions by Unitaid, the Global Fund and other partners.

For malaria, a shared priority is to tackle growing threats of antimalaria drug resistance in sub–Saharan Africa. In addition to addressing the drivers of resistance, the partners seek to increase country adoption of deliberate and pre-emptive strategies such as multiple first line therapies and diversified use of antimalarials to reduce drug selection pressure. We will also build on the success of our joint investment into next-generation, dual-insecticide mosquito nets, which have already prevented an estimated 13 million malaria cases and over 24,000 deaths across 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Unitaid and the Global Fund will continue to collaborate on market shaping interventions across priority HIV and co-infections and co-morbidities, including accelerating access to long-acting HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) products such as the dapivirine vaginal ring and injectable cabotegravir, as well as other near-to-market products.

To learn more about our partnership, read our report: Unitaid and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

About The Global Fund

The Global Fund is a worldwide partnership to defeat HIV, TB and malaria and ensure a healthier, safer, more equitable future for all. We raise and invest more than US$5 billion a year to fight the deadliest infectious diseases, challenge the injustice that fuels them, and strengthen health systems and pandemic preparedness in more than 100 of the hardest hit countries. We unite world leaders, communities, civil society, health workers and the private sector to find solutions that have the most impact, and we take them to scale worldwide. Since 2002, the Global Fund partnership has saved 59 million lives.  

Information on the work of the Global Fund is available at www.theglobalfund.org

Follow the Global Fund on X: https://twitter.com/globalfund

Join the Global Fund on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theglobalfund

###

About Unitaid

Unitaid is a global health organization that lives by making new health products available and affordable for people in low- and middle-income countries. Unitaid works with partners to identify innovative treatments, tests and tools, helps tackle the market barriers that are holding them back, and gets them to the people who need them most – fast. Since it was created in 2006, Unitaid has unlocked access to more than 100 groundbreaking health products to help address the world’s greatest health challenges, including HIV, TB, and malaria; women’s and children’s health; and pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Every year, these products benefit more than 300 million people. Unitaid is a hosted partnership of the World Health Organization.