Rosemary Mapingurei with her granddaughter at the Dumbo district health centre in Zimbabwe
In rural Zimbabwe, 53-year-old Rosemary Mapingurei receives life-saving antiretroviral drugs free of cost at the Dumbo district health centre, a few hours’ drive from Harare. In fact, Rosemary has been coming to the clinic for years and has successfully switched from first line to second line antiretroviral therapy.
Stories like this are heartening to note on World AIDS Day. They are part of a broader narrative in which access to HIV treatment has become the norm in many countries. More than 18 million people now receive HIV treatment worldwide, up from barely 200,000 at the turn of the millennium.
Without innovations in global health, triggered by investments by organizations like UNITAID, that have helped bring down prices of treatment, this remarkable turnaround in fortunes would not have been possible.
Our investments have helped to bring down prices of second-line antiretroviral therapy by up to 60 per cent and allowed thousands of patients like Rosemary to switch to second-line medicines when first-line treatments failed them.
And yet, despite the remarkable progress over the last decade, this is no time for complacency. Ending this epidemic will prove every bit as arduous as getting to where we are now. For every single one of the 18 million people who are on treatment, there is someone without any access at all to medication. And in addition to the 18 million people without treatment, millions more receive sub-optimal therapy that is often toxic and laden with side effects. It is unacceptable that more than 1 million still die of HIV related illnesses every year.
With that in mind, on the eve of World AIDS Day I was in London to sign a new three-year grant with the Clinton Health Access Initiative that will make improved HIV antiretroviral drugs available to people living with HIV as quickly as possible. We will work in 11 countries, including Zimbabwe, to bring these medicines more quickly to the market, identify ways to reduce the cost of manufacturing them and also make them less toxic.
In addition, we are investing in four new research grants to gather data on the use of new priority antiretroviral regimens in developing countries. Such investments can expand antiretroviral therapy and help save almost 600,000 people every year by 2020 – an essential step towards meeting global treatment targets.
On World AIDS Day, we also have some promising results to share from our STAR project, the world’s first HIV self-testing initiative in partnership with Population Services International and the World Health Organization.
Early results show that HIV self-testing can reach people, who have never before been tested for HIV, many of them men and young people. Such innovative ways to reach people with critical testing services can go a long way in meeting a global target of having 90 percent of all people living with HIV aware of their status by 2020.
These new initiatives are the latest in a series of well targeted investments by UNITAID to find new and better ways to prevent, test and treat HIV. UNITAID's investments aim to catalyse innovation and bring more effective and affordable ways to diagnose and treat HIV, tuberculosis and malaria to the global response to these diseases.
For me, it is truly heartening to hear words, like those of Diarmaid McDonald, a member of our Board, who said that “UNITAID takes risks and never rests on its laurels. It blazes a trail for others to follow".
However, in order for the global response to prevail, cooperation and coordination between international agencies has to be even more effective and avoid potential duplication of efforts.
All our initiatives are grounded in a multitude of partnerships with governments, civil society, international organizations, academic and research agencies. Such strong collaborations are testimony to our achievements. Our grants are intended to be transformational and catalytic. When our investments are scaled up by our partners, they can reach millions more and maximize public health impact.
UNITAID is committed to taking many more calculated risks with its investments in order to help end HIV by 2030. Rosemary is counting on it.