GENEVA, 17 November 2015 - UNITAID is working to achieve maximum possible health impact through investments aimed at people most exposed to disease and in greatest need.
A primary goal of UNITAID is to identify how it can best contribute to the global response with carefully targeted investments that help, for example, to overcome specific obstacles such as high prices for medicines that show promise.
These “areas for intervention”, pinpointing where UNITAID’s investments can most effectively help advance global health goals to end HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, are the building blocks of our work. They also enable our partners to achieve more with scarce resources.
The choice of each area in which UNITAID intervenes is grounded in a rigorous analysis of the context surrounding each disease, contained in a coherent disease narrative.
Please click below for links to disease narratives for malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/HCV co-infection, as well as for the methodology underpinning each disease narrative, that were presented at an Executive Board meeting on 4-5 November.
The narratives review each disease, including the overall disease burden; the strategies that are being pursued in order to meet global health goals; actions of partners in pursuing those goals; the extent of any gaps in the response; and the opportunities for intervention by UNITAID.
They also frame, provide context for and establish a scale of priorities for UNITAID’s interventions and articulate potential opportunities to complement partner activities and support the pursuit of global health goals.
On the basis of the disease narrative and following consultation with its partners, UNITAID maps out each of the areas in which it can intervene and proposes them to the Board for validation. UNITAID then launches calls for proposal from potential grantees after identifying specific interventions within each area.
Meeting in Geneva, the Executive Board endorsed malaria investments in three areas: expanding access to preventive chemotherapy in pregnant women; accelerating adoption of innovative vector control tools to combat emerging mosquito resistance to insecticide; and fast-tracking introduction of emergency treatments for life-threatening severe malaria.
The Executive Board also asked UNITAID to explore how its investments could help improve access to diagnostic tests and treatments through channels such as private health facilities, village stores and informal vendors, which are an important conduit for healthcare especially in Africa.
Source: UNITAID