UNITAID and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria have signed a collaboration agreement around a market-shaping agenda to maximize the value for money from each organization’s investments.

Both organizations invest to increase access to health products for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria for those who need them most. UNITAID focuses on global product markets, investing to speed up and increase access to better adapted and more affordable commodities, and Global Fund investments support countries in efforts to expand health programmes, including health products.

The new agreement focuses on three main areas: More rapid development and uptake of high-quality adapted medicines and diagnostics geared toward increasing access for underserved populations; Promoting simpler treatments, including fixed-dose combinations and point-of-care diagnostics that improve adherence and reduce patients’ pill burden; Improving value for money of donor investments by achieving greater market improvements with resulting public health impact.

“Our organizations have worked together since UNITAID was created,” said Dr Philippe Duneton, Executive Director ai of UNITAID. “We have already had significant successes from our collaboration, but we have ambitions to do much more.  It is now more important than ever  to speed up access to the newest and best medicines and technologies for those most in need.   This is what this new agreement is designed to achieve.”

Dr Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund, added: “UNITAID and the Global Fund have complementary roles which are mutually reinforcing. From one perspective, UNITAID is upstream and the Global Fund is downstream.”

UNITAID pushes the innovation, the market-shaping for commodities and the market forces that will put them in the range of affordability, Dr Dybul said. The Global Fund is then well-positioned to work directly with countries to enable them to expand access, improving patient care and ultimately saving more lives.

Three priority areas for engagement have been identified as: Strategic cooperation in market shaping and access interventions; strategic cooperation in sharing market intelligence; and measuring market and public health impact. The priority areas will build on the successful collaboration to date and maximize the combined impact of UNITAID and Global Fund interventions.