Unitaid and Jhpiego reach first women with prevention and treatment for life-threatening bleeding as program awarded EUR 5.5 million in additional funding

Unitaid to support African production of medicines and tools for postpartum hemorrhage, malaria and HIV with new call for proposals

The deadline for submissions is 17:00 Central European Time on 30 August 2024.

Equitable access to affordable, quality assured health products is an essential part of sustainable health systems. However, most of the world’s health products are produced in just a few higher-income countries, leaving many low- and middle-income countries vulnerable to price volatility, supply chain disruptions, or unavailability of essential health products. These risks are particularly acute during periods of supply scarcity when regional or global demand surges or after climate-related shocks or extreme weather events.

To ensure countries are better prepared to prevent and respond to new global health emergencies, people have continued access to the health commodities they need, and to build resilience to climate change, Unitaid is seeking proposals from partners who can support African manufacturers to achieve sustainable production of cost-competitive, quality-assured health tools, and bring them to market.

The new funding opportunity focuses on building African supplies of preventives, medicines and rapid tests used for postpartum hemorrhage, HIV and malaria, and directly supports other Unitaid initiatives to accelerate access to those key tools in countries where the need is greatest.

Through these investments in regional manufacturing, we seek to promote climate-smart health products, build resilience for future pandemic responses, increase supply security, lower costs, stimulate economic growth, empower communities and enhance quality of health tools across Africa.

This call for proposals is targeted at organizations or consortia with demonstrated expertise in upstream product development and manufacturing, and downstream activities including in-country product access. A separate call for expressions of interest targeted at manufacturers in Africa, contract research organizations and contract development and manufacturing organizations will be issued in June 2024, following this call for proposals.

For more information about the scope of this project and how to apply, please consult the call for proposals.

Joint UNFPA-Unitaid venture backed by major EU funding aims to eliminate the leading cause of mothers dying in childbirth in Africa

Unitaid announces a US$45 million investment to increase access to lifesaving products that prevent and treat severe bleeding after childbirth

Geneva, 16 August 2022 – Unitaid is pleased to announce new investments aimed at averting deaths during childbirth. With its partners, Unitaid will advance a package of care for preventing and treating postpartum haemorrhage that is better suited to needs in low- and lower-middle income countries where nearly 94% of all maternal deaths occur.

Defined as severe bleeding after childbirth, postpartum haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide, with stark disparities in survival rates between women in high- versus lower-income countries. Each year, approximately 14 million women experience postpartum haemorrhage, resulting in 70,000 lives lost.

“One in five deaths during childbirth are caused by excessive bleeding. Despite being largely avoidable with access to appropriate tools, each year millions of women suffer the trauma of postpartum haemorrhage. More than 70,000 women die as a result – almost all of them in low- and middle-income countries. Unitaid’s investments aim to reduce this inexcusable gap in care, ensuring critical medicines are available and adapted to use where they are needed most,” said Dr Philippe Duneton, Executive Director of Unitaid.

Oxytocin, the most used medicine for preventing and treating postpartum haemorrhage, requires cold chain storage to remain effective. Because this is difficult to maintain in many resource-limited settings, the quality of the medicine can suffer. Three underutilized drugs recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) hold great potential to improve the control of postpartum haemorrhage, but several barriers limit their wide scale access and use.

With US$45 million invested across three complementary initiatives, Unitaid will fund research needed to optimize use and enable broader access to products that, when implemented at scale, could save tens of thousands of women’s lives.

A clinical trial, coordinated by the UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (Human Reproduction Program), will evaluate the safety and efficacy of using heat-stable carbetocin for treating postpartum haemorrhage. This drug, which is already recommended for preventing excessive bleeding during childbirth, represents a high-quality alternative to oxytocin as it does not require cold chain storage.

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) will lead a second project aimed at improving access to tranexamic acid (TXA), a treatment recommended by the WHO that is proven to reduce the risk of death from severe bleeding by 30%. Currently, TXA can only be administered intravenously, which makes it inaccessible in facilities that lack the necessary staff capacity and infrastructure. A clinical trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of intramuscular administration of TXA compared to intravenous administration. If intramuscular TXA proves to be as effective, this lifesaving treatment could be made much more widely available, particularly at lower levels of the health system where it is needed most.

Lastly, Jhpiego will lead a large-scale demonstration project to inform optimal deployment and scale-up of a critical set of new and newly recommended postpartum haemorrhage drugs in LMICs. This will include heat-stable carbetocin and TXA, as well as misoprostol, a medicine in tablet form that is recommended by the WHO for self-administration to prevent haemorrhage when giving birth at home or in the absence of skilled health personnel.

 

ADDITIONAL QUOTES

“We are delighted to be working with Unitaid and others towards a common goal of reducing severe bleeding after childbirth and saving the lives of mothers world-wide. All mothers should have access to lifesaving treatments wherever they give birth. There is an urgent need for alternative routes of administration to allow task shifting of TXA treatment to community health workers, nurses, and midwives. Evidence that intramuscular TXA is safe and effective will greatly expand equitable access, preventing many women from dying unnecessarily,” said Amy Brenner, Epidemiologist and TRANSFORM Project Lead at LSHTM.

“It is a tragedy that so many women die unnecessarily due to the lack of access to available drugs proven to prevent bleeding after childbirth. These deaths shine a light on continued inequities brought by geography and economy. This important funding announcement from Unitaid along with our collaboration will potentially lift those barriers and go some way to reducing the 70,000 preventable deaths we see from postpartum haemorrhage every year,” said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO).

“One life lost to postpartum hemorrhage is one life too many. Through Unitaid’s commitment to expand access to lifesaving drugs and our partnership with Ministries of Health, FIGO and PATH, we can prevent the deaths of thousands of women who experience severe bleeding after birth. We are honored to lead this project and use our decades-long experience in managing complications at birth to propel catalytic change across Africa and Asia and significantly reduce maternal deaths,” said Elaine Roman, Project Lead at Jhpiego.

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

 

About Unitaid

Unitaid is a global health agency engaged in finding innovative solutions to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases more quickly, cheaply, and effectively, in low- and middle-income countries. Its work includes funding initiatives to address major diseases such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, as well as HIV co-infections and co-morbidities including advanced HIV disease, cervical cancer, and hepatitis C, and cross-cutting areas, such as fever management. Unitaid is now applying its expertise to address challenges in advancing new therapies and diagnostics for the COVID-19 pandemic, serving as a key member of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, co-leading with Wellcome the Therapeutics Pillar and participating in the Diagnostics Pillar. Unitaid is hosted by the World Health Organization.


Media contacts:

Unitaid

Maggie Zander
Communications officer
M: +41 79 593 17 74
zanderm@unitaid.who.int

Improving outcomes for women and children – Unitaid publishes its RMNCH Thematic Narrative

Geneva – Despite the progress in decreasing the global Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child Health (RMNCH) burden over the last 30 years, the SDG targets[1] will not be achieved on the current trajectory.

In 2017 almost 300,000 women died as a result of pregnancy or childbirth; and an estimated 2.5 million newborns died in the first month –  50% of all deaths of children under five.

Building on the success of recent integrated approaches to care – including in the management of childhood fever, prevention and screening of cervical cancer, and elimination of congenital infection in Chagas disease – Unitaid is expanding the scope of its activities in RMNCH. This expansion complements a rich existing portfolio of HIV, TB and malaria grants that target maternal and newborn health.

Published to mark International Women’s Day 2021, this RMNCH Thematic Narrative provides an update on the global landscape of RMNCH, highlighting commodity access challenges and identifying potential areas where Unitaid investment could deliver highest impact.

The Narrative highlights how Unitaid’s role in catalyzing innovation for scale-up could be effectively applied to help drive uptake of promising innovations in low- and middle income countries, and address key drivers of the RMNCH burden.

A number of opportunities were identified, including in the areas of diagnostics for pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, as well as the prevention and management of post-partum haemorrhage. These were recently endorsed by Unitaid’s Executive Board under the Area for Intervention, “New tools for reducing maternal mortality.”

As a result, Unitaid launched a new Call for Proposals in January 2021 – Better tools to prevent and treat postpartum hemorrhage.

The call is open until April 7th and is focused on catalyzing early adoption of new and recently-recommended drugs for postpartum hemorrhage in high-burden countries, as well as advancing late-stage development of new postpartum hemorrhage drug formulations and/or drug delivery methods.

More information can be found here


[1] SDG 3 “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages”

3.1 By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100 000 live births.

3.2 By 2030, end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age, with all countries aiming to reduce neonatal mortality to at least as low as 12 per 1000 live births and under-5 mortality to at least as low as 25 per 1000 live births.


Media contact: Charlotte Baker | +44 7904 460 181 | bakerc@unitaid.who.int

Unitaid looks to invest in better tools to prevent and treat postpartum haemorrhage

Geneva – Unitaid is pleased to announce a new call for proposals in the area of tools for reducing maternal mortality.

Despite a significant reduction in the number of women who die in pregnancy and childbirth over the last 30 years, global progress has stalled. There were almost 300,000 preventable maternal deaths in 2017, most of which occurred in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs).

A coordinated, integrated effort, with emphasis on expanded access to innovative health interventions is needed to reach the 2030 SDG targets and address the unacceptably high number of global maternal deaths.

Under this call, Unitaid is soliciting proposals for interventions aimed at accelerating the adoption and scale-up of innovations to reduce maternal mortality from postpartum haemorrhage (PPH).

Projects that fall under the scope of this call are those that accelerate the introduction of new or newly recommended drugs for PPH, and also push forward the late-stage development of new formulations for the prevention and treatment of PPH.

Applicants are invited to submit proposals for one or both areas of intervention.

The closing date for receipt of full proposals is Wednesday 7th April at 1200 (noon) CET.


About Unitaid calls for proposals

Through calls for proposals, Unitaid finds partners best qualified to put key innovations into practice. A review committee of independent experts in global health helps choose the best proposals to fund through a competitive selection process. Partners receive grants from us to fast-track access and reduce the costs of more effective medicines, technologies and systems. In this way, Unitaid’s investments establish the viability of health innovations, allowing partner organisations to make them widely available.


Media contact: Charlotte Baker | +44 7904 460 181 | bakerc@unitaid.who.int

Strategy development launched and new areas for intervention agreed at 37th meeting of Unitaid’s Executive Board

Geneva – Unitaid will expand its portfolio to target challenges in reducing maternal mortality and tools for detecting tuberculosis, as a result of decisions taken at the 37th meeting of its Executive Board.

Held virtually from the 9th to 10th December 2020, the meeting also saw Unitaid launch the development of its new strategy for 2022-26, agree its budget for 2021 and invite Japan to join the Executive Board.

The Board has approved an external review as an important step towards the development of Unitaid’s next strategy. As a key component of this process, extensive stakeholder engagement will be undertaken throughout 2021, to gain the thoughts and inputs of Unitaid’s partners, grant implementers and civil society groups.

The new areas for intervention agreed by the Board focus on challenges that are deeply relevant to Unitaid’s core work, namely reducing the number of women who die in pregnancy or childbirth, and increasing the detection of TB.

Almost 300,000 women died as a result of pregnancy or childbirth in 2017, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. Unitaid sees great potential in new tools to treat post-partum haemorrhage and pre-eclampsia in particular, leveraging our comparative advantage and strong track record in related areas.

Tuberculosis detection is recognised as a high-impact area for intervention which could play a significant role in advancing both the WHO End TB strategy and the Sustainable Development Goals. Without substantial investment in detection tools, TB will continue to be a leading cause of death in many low- and middle-income countries and among the most vulnerable. Unitaid is pleased to take this opportunity to examine the potential impact of innovations, particularly in the areas of non-sputum based testing and integrated diagnostic solutions, while leveraging the learnings from COVID-19.

Unitaid’s Executive Board Chair Marisol Touraine said: “I am proud that Unitaid’s Executive Board showed ambition and openness. This meeting was extremely productive and strategic. We were able to express a clear and strategic vision for Unitaid to build on its historic ground-breaking work, as well as areas such as maternal and child health, while maintaining its vital role in the fight against COVID-19. This meeting was also an exciting moment as we expanded our Executive Board for the first time in many years by creating a temporary board seat and welcoming Japan, as well as taking the first steps towards developing the new strategy for 2022-26.”

Unitaid’s Executive Director Philippe Duneton said: “It is fantastic to see the board approve future investments in the fields of maternal health and TB detection, which are key elements of Unitaid’s mandate. It is clear that innovation has a vital role to play in bringing down the number of deaths of women during childbirth and pregnancy.  Improving how TB is detected, and identifying cases of TB more quickly and easily is even more important in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.”


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