Davos: Global leaders must urgently prioritise and work to provide access to new long-acting HIV prevention — and potentially treatment — medicines in all low and middle-income countries, to help end AIDS by 2030, said the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting here on Tuesday.
Two drugs have in the recent past shown potential against HIV: Lenacapavir and Cabotegravir.
Lenacapavir, produced by Gilead Sciences, has proved to be more than 95 per cent effective in preventing HIV with just two doses a year. The company is now conducting trials of once-yearly shots.
ViiV Healthcare has the injectable medicine Cabotegravir, administered once every two months to prevent HIV. It is already being used in some countries.
While these new medicines are not a cure or a vaccine, they could halt the HIV pandemic.
Other tools to fight HIV include month-long vaginal rings — currently in use — and longer-acting pills and vaginal rings — under trial. “These new technologies offer us a real shot at ending AIDS by 2030,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary-General of the UN, at the WEF.
“But it comes with a caveat — only if pharmaceutical companies, governments, international partners, and civil society unite around HIV prevention and treatment revolution, can we use these medicines to their full potential and end AIDS much sooner than we previously thought,” she added.
The breakthrough long-acting medicines could stem new HIV infections and are already being used to suppress the virus for some people living with HIV. But their potential can’t be unlocked unless everyone, everywhere who could benefit has access.
UNAIDS urged pharmaceutical companies to move faster and ensure “affordable pricing and generic competition” in the market for the new HIV medicines, Byanyima said.
While UNAIDS applauded Gilead and ViiV’s move to license generics manufacturing to several countries, it said they are moving too slowly.
As a result, generics aren’t expected until next year, and many countries have been left out. Nearly all of Latin America, a region of rising HIV infections, has been excluded.
In addition, Gilead has licensed just six companies to make generic versions of the medicine — with no producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
To make these medicines widely available and affordable, more generic production is needed, the agency said.
Byanyima called for action against AIDS similar to the method that was used to roll out contraceptives and Covid-19 vaccines. “Science has delivered a miraculous new tool: medicines that prevent HIV infection with injections just twice a year and which could work for treatment too,” said Byanyima.
“We must do better this time. Either companies step up, or governments step in. This is our shot to end AIDS – and we cannot afford to miss it,” she added.
The WEF Annual Meeting 2025 is taking place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland from 20 to 24 January. Global leaders are deliberating various issues under the theme ‘Collaboration for the Intelligent Age’.
(IANS)
