Unitaid steps up drive to revolutionise HIV diagnosis
Amsterdam – Unitaid stepped up its drive to revolutionise HIV diagnosis with today‘s launch of two grant projects that promote self-testing as a key to turning the course of the world’s HIV epidemic. Unitaid’s investments in HIV self-testing now stand at more than US $100 million.
The new projects, with partners MTV Staying Alive Foundation and France’s NGO Solthis, follow several groundbreaking Unitaid-funded initiatives that have proved self-test kits can be an excellent, affordable way to reach people in high-risk, often stigmatized groups where the virus is entrenched, as well as those who have never been tested before.
A quarter of the 36.9 million people living with HIV worldwide are unaware that they are infected, according to the latest UNAIDS report on the epidemic.
“The knowledge we’ve gained in piloting self-testing shows us that HIV self-tests can make a huge public health impact when introduced on a large scale,” Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora said. ‘The first of the UN 90-90-90 targets calls for 90 percent of people living with HIV to know their HIV status by 2020, and self-testing has the potential to help get us there.”
To date, 59 countries have self-testing programs, up from 47 in 2017.
Unitaid is providing US$ 10.1 million to the MTV Staying Alive Foundation to embed storylines involving HIV self-testing and prevention into its very popular MTV Shuga TV drama, a series viewed by many millions of adolescents and young adults in Africa. The grant will also fund a multimedia campaign and peer education programmes aimed at people 15 to 24 years old, one of the segments of the population most vulnerable to contracting HIV.
“The MTV Staying Alive Foundation is delighted to be partnering with Unitaid to create three new MTV Shuga campaigns in South Africa and Cote d’Ivoire,” said Georgia Arnold, Executive Director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation. “Our 360 degree approach enables us to reach a wide range of young people, providing them with entertainment that will ultimately help them make informed decisions and shape their lives for the better. This collaboration is a unique opportunity to create demand for HIV self-testing kits and PrEP and create behavioural change in this key target population.”
Solthis’s $US 15.7 million ATLAS project will introduce and promote self-testing among people at high risk of HIV infection, and their partners, in Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal. The project will use outreach programmes that are already in place to connect with hard-to-reach groups where HIV is prevalent. Knowledge gained from the project will show the best ways to deploy self-testing and integrate it into national health programmes.
ATLAS plans to distribute about 500,000 test kits, which is expected to stimulate more investment in West Africa. ATLAS stands for Autotest, libre d’accéder à la connaissance de son statut VIH, (Self-test to find out one’s HIV status).
“We know the urgency in focusing on accelerating HIV testing progress in West and Central Africa. ATLAS will respond to this need by adopting a complementary and innovative approach with self-testing,” said Louis Pizarro, CEO of Solthis. “It will allow us to target hard to reach groups at high risk of HIV who are not currently accessing testing services. We are proud to work with IRD on this project, and that Unitaid is supporting this innovative approach which has never been tested at this scale in the region.”
The market for HIV self-testing was virtually non-existent in lower-income countries when in 2015 Unitaid invested US$ 23 million in the HIV Self-Testing Africa (STAR) project with Population Services International. The two-year pilot project in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia proved that test kits could penetrate groups where testing was otherwise low, and that the tests could be performed by people who have no medical training.
The success of STAR motivated Unitaid to seek out more projects with the potential to create a powerful market for self-testing in all low- and middle-income countries, and has been the driving force for greater country and donor interest in scaling up the strategy.
In 2017, Unitaid and implementing partners embarked on a second phase of the STAR project, expanding it to South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, with the support of those governments.
“By expanding HIV testing beyond the clinic and into the hands of those we need to reach most — adolescents, men and other high risk groups — we make it easier for them to know their status and access treatment, in a way that works for them,” said Karl Hofmann, President and CEO of Population Services International. “Putting more power and control into health consumers’ hands is smart, effective and overdue.”
This month, Unitaid’s financial support of the World Health Organization’s prequalification program led to approval of the first HIV self-test kit. Prequalification by WHO is an internationally recognised approval that enables countries and large funding bodies, such as the Global Fund, to procure and distribute medicines and other health products.
Unitaid is also a member of the MenStar Coalition, launched yesterday at the conference in Amsterdam by Sir Elton John and Prince Harry. MenStar supports innovative ways to deliver HIV testing and treatment services to men. Unitaid and partners are participating in MenStar’s “human-centered design challenge fund”, a competition to find great design ideas that can be used to promote HIV self-testing among men.
Media contacts
Dominique De Santis (Amsterdam), Unitaid, desantisd@who.int, cell. +41 78 911 5327
Andrew Hurst (Geneva), Unitaid, hursta@who.int, cell. +41 79 561 6807
Global partners pledge over $1.2 billion to launch the MenStar Coalition
Sir Elton John and the Duke of Sussex announce new global coalition focused on expanding diagnosis and treatment of HIV in men.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands (July 24, 2018) – Today, a diverse group of global partners jointly launched the MenStar Coalition at the 2018 International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam. Announced by Sir Elton John and the Duke of Sussex, the MenStar Coalition brings together the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Unitaid, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Johnson & Johnson, and Gilead Sciences. Leveraging over $1.2 billion in initial planned funding from these founding partners, MenStar will expand the diagnosis and treatment of HIV infections in men – keys to breaking the cycle of HIV transmission and ultimately ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Recent data from many high-burden countries show that men, particularly those aged 24-35, access HIV testing and treatment at low rates, endangering their own health and also expanding the spread of HIV among adolescent girls and young women.
MenStar will support innovative approaches to deliver appropriate and effective HIV/AIDS services for men, increasing their rapid uptake of HIV testing, linkage to HIV treatment, and achievement of viral suppression. Multiple approaches will be deployed including: data analytics and human-centered design to better adapt services to men; nuanced demand creation; targeted marketing; innovations, such as HIV self-testing; and supply-side solutions. The partnership will also ensure essential HIV commodities and services are available to meet increased consumer demand.
MenStar brings together the HIV service delivery capacities of the public sector with the consumer-oriented marketing acumen of the private sector to optimize efforts in reaching men with HIV testing and treatment. One of MenStar’s first initiatives will be partnering with creative agencies in Kenya to develop an HIV self-testing campaign aimed at young men, supported by the Elton John AIDS Foundation, CIFF, and Unitaid to launch in 2019. The coalition will also support specific male-friendly strategies for HIV service delivery, such as dedicated men’s corners at existing health clinics, expanded clinic hours, and deeper community engagement to better reach men.
With a planned contribution of over $800 million to reach men in the next year, the United States, through PEPFAR, plans to reach an additional 1 million men with HIV treatment through its investment and support over 90% of men in this age group to be virally suppressed to effectively interrupt HIV transmission.
Given the common vision and interconnectivity between these individual efforts, the partners have formed a coalition to enhance each other’s work and achieve greater impact, including by accelerating countries’ progress toward reaching the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS 90-90-90 targets by 2020 for all ages, genders, and at-risk groups.
Sir Elton John commented: “It was a privilege to be able to launch such an important coalition of global partners as MenStar and for the Elton John AIDS Foundation to play such a pivotal role in its establishment. As a charity, we always try to pioneer new approaches to critical problems, then work with bigger players to optimize their impact. MenStar will give the Elton John AIDS Foundation the chance to do just that, to share learning quickly and complement one another’s activities.”
New partnership to help fast-track affordable HIV medicine for children living with HIV
We are delighted to announce the joint launch of a partnership to speed up development and introduction of optimized pediatric formulations of dolutegravir for children living with HIV in resource-limited settings. Dolutegravir is the HIV drug of choice in high-income countries, which has fewer side effects and a simpler dosing regimen than older drugs.
The new initiative includes an incentive program and is a key feature of Unitaid’s US$34 million Optimal Antiretroviral (ARV) grant to the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). The optimal ARV grant aims to bring optimized HIV drugs to market more quickly than in the past and integrate them into treatment programmes in communities that need them most. As part of this, CHAI is also working closely with health ministries, community leaders and other partners to support introduction in resource-limited settings.
Accelerating the development of pediatric ARVs and increasing access to HIV testing for children in resource-limited settings is a strategic investment priority for Unitaid. As part of this programme, and with funding from Unitaid, CHAI and ViiV Healthcare will work together to improve the availability of pediatric formulations of dolutegravir. A key aspect of the initiative to-date has been the competitive selection of two generic manufacturers, Mylan Laboratories Limited and Macleods Pharmaceuticals Limited. The initiative provides Mylan and Macleods with a financial incentive award from Unitaid, as well as the technical expertise of ViiV Healthcare, to catalyze the development, manufacturing and supply of generic formulations of pediatric dolutegravir.
ViiV Healthcare, the company that researched and developed dolutegravir, continues to press ahead with the clinical development and registration of its own pediatric formulations of dolutegravir. ViiV Healthcare is also enabling generic pharmaceutical companies to manufacture and sell generic versions of the medicine in resource-limited settings through existing royalty-free licensing agreements that have been granted both directly and via the Medicines Patent Pool.
This initiative is an important step towards our commitments under the Rome Action Plan agreed in November 2017 at the Vatican, to ramp up access to pediatric HIV treatment with innovative medicines like dolutegravir.
Less than half of the 1.8 million children under 15 living with HIV receive antiretroviral therapy, according to recent UNAIDS data. Children in low- and middle-income countries account for more than 90 percent of the global pediatric HIV burden. Treatment options are limited because it can take years to commercialize proper HIV medicines for children.
Joint Statement – Unitaid, Viiv Healthcare and CHAI
Promoting HIV Self-Testing in West Africa
An HIV media campaign to empower African youth
Do it yourself. A campaign to bring HIV self-testing to South Africa
Expanding HIV self-testing in Africa
Impact story: HIV Self-Testing
