Unitaid salue le prix historiquement bas obtenu par MSF pour le traitement contre l’hépatite C

Unitaid welcomes the recent announcement by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) that they have secured a price of US$ 120 for treatments for hepatitis C virus (HCV). The news is a significant milestone in the race to eliminate viral hepatitis.

MSF’s HCV project, which Unitaid has funded for the past three years, aims to improve access to diagnosis and treatment for HCV in low- and middle-income countries.

The focus is on three main areas: developing simple, adapted and cost-effective models of care so that countries can efficiently scale up HCV diagnosis and treatment; ensuring products are available at the lowest possible price; and evaluating diagnostics and treatments that work for different genetic variants of the virus.

Today’s announcement complements the broader work MSF are doing to develop models of care so that countries can scale up HCV diagnosis and treatment with maximum efficiency.

MSF’s HCV project is a critical component of Unitaid’s portfolio of co-infection grants. We are excited about the impact that is now being realized through Unitaid investment in hepatitis C.

Read more:

“MSF secures generic hepatitis C treatment at $120 compared to $147,000 launch price tag” – Médecins Sans Frontières Access campaign website

“Improving access to diagnosis and treatment for hepatitis C in low- and middle-income countries” – Unitaid project page

Unitaid publishes Technology and Market Landscape for Hepatitis C Medicines

Geneva – The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 71 million people worldwide are chronically infected with Hepatitis C virus (HCV). Of those, 2.3 million people are co-infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and HCV. In 2015, around 400,000 people died of HCV-related liver disease, and the global HCV burden is increasing.

Unitaid’s Technology and Market Landscape for Hepatitis C Medicines reviews the current global market for direct-acting antivirals (DAAs), which have revolutionized treatment for HCV. Combinations of direct-acting antivirals are highly effective; they can cure HCV infection in 12 weeks, and have limited side-effects. Combinations that are effective against all genotypes of HCV have started to become available. These pan-genotypic combinations can contribute to simplifying diagnostics and treatment, and could enable treatment to be introduced in resource-limited settings.

The first part of Unitaid’s report, on technology, reviews the various medicines and combinations now available to treat HCV and looks forward to regimens currently in development.

The second part of the report surveys the market for direct-acting antivirals, which is relatively new in low- and middle-income countries. Ensuring a robust supply of HCV drugs can be a challenge, with various market forces affecting their procurement and uptake. Though the market for generic direct-acting antivirals has developed fast, it remains fragile.

The report also asks how best to prioritize high-risk groups for HCV screening, diagnosis and treatment.  Some “pathfinder” countries are reportedly considering this approach. Groups at high risk for HCV infection include, among others, people living with HIV, people who inject drugs, prisoners and children born to HCV-positive mothers.

Offering HCV screening in, for instance, clinics for antiretroviral therapy and harm reduction services may make it easier to find HCV-positive patients, and to reduce new infections, the report concludes.

Read the report:

Technology and Market Landscape for Hepatitis C Medicines (2017)

Previous reports:

All Unitaid’s Hepatitis C publications

Hepatitis C medicines technology and market landscape

Unitaid marque la Journée mondiale contre l’hépatite

Unitaid joins the global health community today to mark World Hepatitis Day, an occasion for raising public awareness of the epidemic of curable liver viruses that cause 1.34 million deaths each year.

Unitaid is helping to defeat the epidemic by investing US$ 58 million in three grant projects (2015-2019) aimed at hepatitis C (HCV). The projects seek to develop new and simpler diagnostics, establish innovative models for screening and treatment in HIV/HCV co-infected populations, and devise cost-reduction strategies.

 

Unitaid’s investments in HCV:

 Read more:

Landscape for HIV rapid diagnostic tests for HIV self-testing – 3rd edition – July 2016

Review of the Velpatasvir patent landscape: A scoping report

Partenariat entre Unitaid et FIND pour améliorer les produits de diagnostic et de traitement de l’hépatite C

Unitaid today announced a partnership with FIND to improve diagnostics and treatments for hepatitis C virus (HCV) and make them more affordable and widely available to those in need.

The US $38.3 million project will support the development of better, simpler,  diagnostic tools for HCV where people seek care, and will introduce HCV testing and treatment over three and a half years in HIV programmes in seven countries: Cameroon, Georgia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

Until recently, treatment of HCV was complex, lengthy and of limited efficacy. In addition, severe side effects made it difficult for some to complete the full course of treatment, which could take a year or more.

New medicines for the treatment of HCV, in the form of direct acting antivirals (DAAs), have revolutionized HCV treatment in recent years. Combinations of these new medicines, which are generally well tolerated and highly effective, can cure HCV in as little as 12 weeks, compared with the older, year-long regimens.

However, a lack of appropriate diagnostic tools for HCV infection remains a challenge; it is estimated that fewer than 5 percent of HCV-infected people are diagnosed. Existing HCV screening and diagnostic tools are relatively expensive and not suited for the clinical contexts of low- and middle-income countries or for all infections, particularly where patients are co-infected with HIV and HCV. This makes it hard to identify and diagnose – and thus to treat – HCV infection in people living with HIV.

“This is a classic example of a bottleneck where Unitaid can help to unlock markets with the potential to make HCV diagnostics and treatment more affordable and therefore available for millions of people,” said Lelio Marmora, Executive Director of Unitaid.

“The treatment breakthrough offers a tremendous opportunity to address HCV, particularly among HIV/HCV co-infected people, who progress faster to serious disease than HCV mono-infected people,” said Catharina Boehme, Chief Executive Officer at FIND. “Testing and treatment must go hand in hand, and the main obstacle now is the lack of appropriate diagnostic tests. This makes those co-infected with HIV/HCV a priority group for diagnosis and treatment”.

In May 2016, the World Health Assembly adopted, for the first time ever, a strategy on viral hepatitis calling for: 90 percent reduction in new cases, 65 percent reduction in mortality, 90 percent of HCV infections diagnosed, and 80 percent of eligible people with chronic HCV infection treated by 2030.

Today’s new project aims to: make new HCV point-of-care products ready for purchase; make HCV diagnostic tests and treatments available in the health systems of the project countries; lower the prices of HCV testing and treatment; and use findings from the FIND project to drive global and regional policy towards scaling up HCV management. Project implementation will be supported by WHO, which issued ground-breaking policy guidance for countries to scale up access to hepatitis C medicines and diagnostics earlier this year.

About Unitaid

Unitaid is engaged in finding new ways to prevent, treat and diagnose HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria more quickly, more affordably and more effectively.  It takes game-changing ideas and turns them into practical solutions that can help accelerate the end of the three diseases. Established in 2006 by Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the United Kingdom to provide an innovative approach to global health, Unitaid plays an important part in the global effort to defeat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, by facilitating and speeding up the availability of improved health tools, including medicines and diagnostics.

About FIND

FIND, established in 2003, is a global non-profit dedicated to accelerating the development, evaluation and use of high-quality, affordable diagnostic tests for poverty-related diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, sleeping sickness, hepatitis C, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, Buruli ulcer and infectious diseases with outbreak potential such as Ebola. Over the last decade, FIND has partnered in the delivery of 14 new diagnostic tools, including eight for tuberculosis, and created an enabling environment for numerous others through the provision of specimen banks, reagent development and better market visibility. FIND also supports better access to new diagnostics through implementation, quality assurance and lab strengthening work. FIND has more than 200 partners globally, including research institutes and laboratories, health ministries and national disease control programmes, commercial partners, clinical trial sites, and bilateral and multilateral organizations, especially WHO.

Unitaid welcomes sub-licenses to make hepatitis C drug widely available

UNITAID welcomes agreements to manufacture a key Hepatitis C medicine and make it available in many low- and middle-income countries.

The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), which is fully funded by UNITAID, signed licenses for the generic production of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s daclatasvir with four generic companies – Cipla, Emcure, Hetero and Natco.

Between 80 and 156 million people worldwide are estimated to have Hepatitis C. This includes many people in Africa, Central and East Asia. “Making daclatasvir widely available in Africa and Asia is important to simplify diagnosis and treatments, as combinations with daclatasvir are effective against all genotypes of the Hepatitis C virus,” said Lelio Marmora, Executive Director of UNITAID. “These licenses will help countries that have limited resources, and I am delighted that UNITAID has helped to make this possible.”

These agreements follow an earlier license signed on 23 November 2015 between Medicines Patent Pool and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The Medicines Patent Pool is a United Nations-backed public health organisation working to increase access to HIV, viral hepatitis C and tuberculosis treatments in low- and middle-income countries.

For more information, view the press release here.