HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis continue to demand urgent attention because the majority of people affected by these diseases do not have access to the diagnostics to detect them or the medicines to treat them. As a consequence, death from these treatable diseases remains high.
Poverty is often cited as the main reason for lack of access. But there are other factors, linked to markets and patents, that perpetuate the dire lack of health solutions available to people in developing countries. These are related to the high price of medicines – and diagnostics – and to the low availability of products adapted to the needs of patients in these low- and middle-income countries.
Many tools needed to stave off illnesses that disproportionately affect developing countries simply do not exist. Without predictable funds, manufacturers remain reluctant to invest in researching and developing products for low-income countries, even though these countries carry the largest burden of diseases. When the products do exist - because they respond to a market need in the North or developed world - their price is set according to purchasing power in wealthy countries. As a result, those medicines remain out of reach of the vast majority of the people who need them most. Some telling examples are the lack of medicines adapted to children; the gap in innovation for medicines to cure resistant strains of TB; or the high cost of second-line HIV treatment, which is readily available to patients in the North but prohibitively priced for those in the South.
UNITAID's action concentrates on seeking solutions to fill these gaps.
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