A deal has been signed for a generic medicine to prevent HIV infection.
Unitaid and the Medicines Patent Pool said Thursday that an agreement has been reached to allow the sale of a low-cost generic version of a long-term HIV prevention therapy in low-income countries, where the majority of infections occur.
ViiV Healthcare, a subsidiary of GSK, will enable chosen manufacturers to develop generic versions of Cabotegravir LA, its long-acting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) therapy for HIV.
According to Unitaid, the agreement would enable access to the injectable form of cabotegravir, which has been proved to provide two months of protection against infection, in 90 countries where more than 70% of all new HIV infections occurred in 2020.
“Access to an effective long-acting HIV prevention alternative might considerably help to the objective of stopping HIV transmission and the epidemic by 2030,” said Herve Verhoosel, a Unitaid spokeswoman.
“Efforts to expand access to Cabotegravir LA for PrEP will be especially beneficial for groups with extremely high rates of infection, such as men who have sex with males and sex workers,” he noted.
Long-lasting cabotegravir injections were just recently made accessible, and they have been proved to be far more successful than an oral form that must be taken daily.
However, the expense — a year’s therapy cost $22,000 in the United States early this year — remained an impediment to widespread adoption in all but high-income nations.
‘Global top priority’
On Thursday, the World Health Organization issued new guidelines for cabotegravir, urging governments to move quickly to make the medicine available to individuals in need.
“We expect that these new recommendations will assist expedite national efforts to begin planning and delivering CAB-LA alongside other HIV prevention alternatives,” said Meg Doherty, head of the WHO’s global HIV, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infection programs.
The announcement comes only one day after a new report released at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada, revealed that the worldwide campaign against HIV has halted owing to reduced resources caused by Covid-19 and other challenges.
Last year, 1.5 million new infections occurred — more than a million more than the worldwide aim of battling the virus.
“Long-acting PrEP might play a significant role in resolving the HIV pandemic, but it is now available to only a small number of individuals,” said Adeeba Kamarulzaman, president of the International AIDS Society, which is hosting the meeting.
“Improving access to this game-changing preventative technology at an affordable scale must be a major worldwide goal,” she said in a statement.
Unitaid is a worldwide health effort that strives to ensure low- and middle-income nations have fair access to medical advances.
Unitaid-supported Medications Patent Pool strives to license critical medicines for generic distribution in low- and middle-income countries.