Unitaid

01/06/2026

Health innovation alone does not change lives.

Over the past 20 years, efforts have focused on closing the gap between innovation and access, helping expand availability of more than 150 health innovations across HIV, malaria, maternal health and diagnostics.

Innovation continues to move quickly. The challenge is ensuring it translates into impact at scale, for the people it is intended to reach.

29/05/2026

Over 20 years, we have focused on one persistent challenge in global health: ensuring innovation translates into access at scale.

That work has helped expand access to more than 150 health innovations, reaching 320 million people each year.

Because when access is built into how innovation is delivered, impact scales faster and further.

29/05/2026

Africa CDC is thrilled to invite you to today's session of the Health Partnership Webinar Series.

The discussion will bring together leading experts in research, clinical innovation and programme management to examine how collaboration can accelerate translational research: From Scientific Discovery to Clinical Application.

🗓 Friday, 29 May 2026
⏰ 15:00–16:30 EAT | 14:00–15:30 CET
🔗 Register here: tiny.cc/bu72101

28/05/2026

Margaret Happy lost her two sisters in the 1990s, when HIV treatment was not available.

Today, she works in Uganda to help prevent advanced HIV disease through timely diagnosis and care.

At Unitaid, we are working to strengthen access to CD4 testing alongside viral load testing, ensuring people can be identified and treated in time.

But in some settings, access is declining—putting timely diagnosis at risk.

Read more about why CD4 testing still matters and what’s being done to protect access.

Link below.

27/05/2026

Health solutions must adapt to a warming world. The World Health Organization (WHO) has called climate change the single biggest health threat facing humanity, with rising temperatures, extreme weather and disrupted supply chains already affecting access to care. These challenges are most acute in low- and middle-income countries, where fragile infrastructure makes it harder to store and deliver essential medicines safely. In this context, ensuring that health products remain effective without reliance on cold chains is more important than ever. Heat-stable carbetocin helps prevent severe bleeding after childbirth and remains effective without refrigeration, supporting safer births everywhere.

Postpartum hemorrhage is a leading cause of maternal death, with atonic PPH the most common form. It can escalate rapidly after delivery and requires immediate prevention, yet widely used medicines like oxytocin depend on reliable cold storage. Heat-stable carbetocin offers a climate-resilient alternative that can be stored and used in high temperatures, helping health workers act quickly when it matters most.

At Unitaid, advancing climate-smart health products is central to our work. Alongside heat-stable carbetocin, we support a broader package of tools to prevent, identify and treat severe bleeding, including tranexamic acid, misoprostol and blood loss measurement calibrated drapes. Expanding access to these innovations is essential to protecting maternal health in a changing climate.

26/05/2026

HIV still affects millions of people worldwide, yet stigma, fear and shame continue to prevent many from getting tested or starting treatment early. As Christine Nakalembe, a community champion with the THRIVE project, explains, overcoming stigma requires effort at every step, from encouraging people to seek care to ensuring they feel welcomed and accepted at health facilities.

Community health workers are at the heart of change. Through the Unitaid funded THRIVE project, led by the Clinton Health Access Initiative in partnership with AfroCAB-HIV and Penta - Child Health Research, we are strengthening community led approaches to reach people earlier, prevent advanced HIV disease and reduce avoidable deaths. By building trust and bringing services closer to communities, THRIVE is helping ensure no one is left behind.

Watch to learn more! 👇

26/05/2026

Health innovation does not automatically reach the people who need it.

We work in the critical space between development and scale, addressing market failures that prevent equitable access.

These include unaffordable pricing, supply insecurity, fragmented demand and limited manufacturing capacity.

By shaping markets and supporting introduction strategies, we help create the conditions for health innovations to reach people faster, more reliably and at lower cost.

25/05/2026

A major breakthrough in HIV prevention raises a critical global question: how do we ensure that innovation translates into equitable access?

Lenacapavir, a long-acting injectable HIV prevention drug, has the potential to reshape HIV prevention, particularly for adolescent girls and young women who continue to be disproportionately affected by the epidemic. But its impact will be determined not in the laboratory, but in whether health systems can deliver it affordably, at scale, and where it is needed most.

In an op-ed featured in The Independent, Philippe Duneton, Executive Director, Unitaid and Anne Aslett, CEO Elton John AIDS Foundation, examine what this moment means for the global HIV response, and why decisions on pricing, production, and delivery will determine whether this breakthrough reaches the communities most in need.

The discussion also reflects broader conversations taking place across global development, including at the recent UK Global Partnerships Conference, where leaders emphasized that traditional aid models alone are no longer enough. Delivering impact at scale will increasingly depend on stronger partnerships, wider coalitions, and new approaches to financing and access.

This week, 3,300 young women in sub-Saharan Africa will find out they have HIV. And next week. And the week after.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Long-acting injectable PrEP changes the equation.

“We only get one chance to do this right,” says our CEO, Anne Aslett and Unitaid Executive Director, Philippe Duneton, on the breakthrough we cannot afford to waste.

Read the full article: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/hiv-aids-help-lenacapavir-aid-cuts-b2975155.html

Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

25/05/2026

Innovation is not only about new products.

We believe innovation is just as much about improving how existing tools and treatments are delivered, making care simpler, more affordable and easier to reach.

Over the past 20 years, partnerships across countries, communities, research and global health have helped expand access to lifesaving tools and treatments worldwide.

Because behind every innovation is a person who needs care.

22/05/2026

Over the past 20 years, we have helped introduce more than 150 health innovations around the world.

These include not only new medicines and tools, but also innovative ways of delivering existing care more effectively — supporting frontline health workers and making it easier for people to access quality services.

When health innovation works well, it helps health systems:
• deliver care more simply
• reduce costs
• reach more people
• improve the quality of services

From HIV and TB to malaria and maternal health, these innovations have helped expand access to care for millions of people.