New Medicines May Help End AIDS — but High Prices & Monopolies Could Keep the Poor Locked Out — Global Issues
WASHINGTON DC, May 18 (IPS) – Here’s the good news: there’s a new set of breakthrough drugs to prevent and treat HIV, known as “long-burns” because they can be taken every few months instead. because every day, and they’re streaming. If, when they are deployed, they are made available on a large scale, they could help save lives and help end the AIDS epidemic.
But here’s the bad news: on the current trajectory, most people who need them won’t be able to get them anytime soon, because high prices and oligopolies will limit people in low- and middle-income countries. regime. That’s where we’re headed – again.
UNAIDS has convened some of the world’s leading scientists and researchers. They emphasized to us that the drugs are long-acting Prevent is now available – a shot every few months for very effective protection against HIV transmission. It has been approved in the US and the World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing it now.
And in the near future, there are many other interesting drugs that are being developed for long-term effects treatment – this could make it much easier for people to stay on lifelong HIV treatment, even if their lives make it difficult to take daily medication.
New HIV prevention tools such as long-acting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) are particularly needed to combat the ongoing pandemic. By 2020, a year in which the world has set a common goal of reducing new infections to less than 500,000 cases, 1.5 million in fact; and in too many communities new HIV infections are on the rise.
Long-acting injectable PrEP can help meet the critical HIV prevention needs of people who face the world’s highest risk of HIV infection – especially those whose livelihoods, logistics and the legal context makes oral access and preparation difficult.
This includes people who face discrimination, including gay men, transgender people, sex workers and people who use drugs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. as well as Eastern Europe. Young African women, facing a much higher risk than young men their age, also need new HIV prevention options.
Studies have shown that many people want a long-acting option, and in fact an estimated 74 million people worldwide use the long-acting injection to prevent pregnancy. Carefully performed studies presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROIs) show that long-acting PrEP can prevent more new infections than taking a single pill a day.
If and when WHO endorses its use, the world should move quickly to make it available on a large scale. The best way to ensure this groundbreaking science becomes a global game changer is to make it available to everyone who chooses it for free.
United Nations Member States agreed to a New Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS last year, setting an ambitious target of 11 million people having access to PrEP by 2025. To make it achievable For this, governments and organizations that need to make large-scale purchases will need to do so at prices they can afford.
Currently, in the United States, long-acting PrEP costs tens of thousands of dollars. But members of UNAIDS’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) evaluates that the long-acting preparation can be produced at an affordable price – tens of dollars instead of tens of thousands. It is possible that prices will fall while ensuring continued profits for manufacturers.
As for treatment, science is also evolving rapidly, and the promising technologies along the way can be transformative. As of last year, 28.2 million people were on HIV treatment – that’s more than 10 billion times a year people with HIV take a pill.
But 10 million people still need access to HIV treatment. If people could choose a week-long pill or a month-long shot, that would make it easier for many people to start and stay on treatment – saving lives and stopping HIV transmission.
A major structural barrier jeopardizing broad access is that the production of these drugs has so far been monopolized by a handful of companies based in a handful of small countries, keeping prices high and low. limited (and centralized) supply. We know from experience (for first-line, second-generation ARVs, vaccines and COVID-19 drugs) that this barrier can only be overcome through intervention.
When HIV treatment was first introduced in the late 1990s, exclusive ARVs meant prices above $10,000 per person per year, a price far beyond the reach of millions of people living with HIV.
As a result, 12 million Africans died. The mass use of ARVs to prevent AIDS occurs only when low- and middle-income countries defy pressure and create general competition, and when global civil society pressures Western governments and companies shut down to stop them.
That experience has prompted the world to speak out never to allow unauthorized people in developing countries access to life-saving medical technology. But the same approach of exclusion and death has left Africa without access to enough vaccines during the COVID-19 crisis.
And on our current trajectory, we of course have to repeat the story with new HIV drugs. It can take years before new drugs available in New York or London reach the people who need them most in Manila, Freetown, Maputo, Sao Paolo and Port-au-Prince.
There is an alternative approach that ensures the translation of science into impact. HIV drug manufacturers can set prices affordable to low- and middle-income countries. To ensure this in the long run, joint production in low- and middle-income countries is essential.
To do that we have to overcome monopoly. Pooling of patents and proactive technology transfer could enable many manufacturers in Africa, Asia and Latin America to produce low-cost long-acting ARVs. This should be standard practice – and information sharing can begin even before regulatory approval for use.
Of course, price and local production are not the only barriers to ensuring efficient use. Some public health systems may require global solidarity and support to procure goods, with logistics and storage, training to deliver effectively, and engaging communities to ensure insurance needs and literacy treatment to maintain. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS and our partners are providing support on all of this.
Building on urgent COVID-19 action, we need to end inequality of access across health technology, by promoting the best of science and making it available to everyone, investing in all kinds of health innovations like global public goods.
To prevent pandemics today and prevent future pandemics, it is important to move from monopolizing knowledge about life-saving medical technologies to sharing it around the world. We need to reform the intellectual property protection rules that have failed us during these pandemics, so that access to life-saving science no longer depends on the passport you hold or the amount of money in your pocket. yours.
We need governments to use their powers to mandate the sharing of pandemic science and technology and ways to force companies and countries to use WHO-led mechanisms. We need to separate the drivers of innovation from the monopoly of production. Monopolies limit supply, maintain unacceptable prices, increase inequality and have proven an unreliable driver of innovation, especially when it comes to health problems. health disproportionately affects people living in poverty.
We now need to invest in building medical manufacturing capacity around the world. We need to prioritize investments in universities and other public research institutions to enhance our technical capacity to develop health technology for all.
We can end the AIDS epidemic. And the COVID-19 pandemic. And prevent future pandemics. But we’re not on track — in part because biomedical breakthroughs aren’t reaching the people who need them most. If we take long-acting antiretroviral drugs, many people who would otherwise be infected with HIV will not get it. People with HIV who would otherwise die of AIDS do not. And the happiness and dignity of those at risk of or living with HIV can be enhanced.
Globally equitable access to anti-pandemic technologies cannot be achieved through market default alone. It depends on policy and practice. The implementation of those policies cannot wait until all those technologies are deployed on a large scale in rich countries, but needs to be accelerated now.
Leaders from civil society networks, especially those led by people living with HIV and key populations, are calling on us to act now to ensure global continuity access to new HIV technologies. We can and we should.
Shared science will save lives and prevent pandemics.
IPS UN Office
Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
Follow IPS News UN Office on Instagram
© Inter Press Service (2022) – All rights reservedOrigin: Inter Press Service
