Campaigners welcome UNAIDS backing for governments choosing to break HIV medicine monopolies

Today, at a meeting of the board of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) to discuss new long-acting HIV medicines, Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director, said: “After antiretroviral medicines were proven to be effective and rolled out in high-income countries, 12 million people on this continent still died waiting for those drugs. We can – and must – do better with long-actings. We urge the companies producing these medicines to expand their generics licenses. And we support governments making use of all their legal flexibilities to get access to affordable medicines.”

Javier Padilla Bernáldez, Spain’s Secretary of State for Health, said “No countries should be pressured if they choose to use the safeguards in the TRIPS agreement.”

Speaking at the UNAIDS meeting, Asia Russell, Executive Director of Health GAP, said:

“There is no epidemiological justification for companies like Gilead to allow some countries to access a generic while locking others out. It’s an injustice, plain and simple. But this behaviour isn’t new. At every stage of the HIV response, we’ve had to fight for access to lifesaving medicines. When pharmaceutical companies decide to obstruct access, governments can and should use legal tools like compulsory licensing.”

Responding, Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni, policy co-lead of the People’s Medicines Alliance, said:

“For how long should pharmaceutical companies be allowed to stand between people and the medicines they need? For how long should governments make history repeat itself? At the height of the AIDS crisis, it was generic production that allowed millions to get on to treatment and save lives. That is what is needed now for long acting medicines like lenacapavir. The message from UNAIDS here is clear: governments should exercise their right to use legal tools in the TRIPS agreement, enabling the production and access their people need.”

/Ends

Notes

The quotes from Winnie Byanyima and Javier Padilla were released by UNAIDS: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2024/december/20241210_leaders-call-for-access-to-long-acting-medicines

Health GAP has developed a briefing and campaign guide for access to lenacpavir: https://healthgap.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/WAD-Toolkit-8.pdf

In May, more than 300 leading activists, scientists, and world leaders joined the People’s Medicines Alliance in a call for Gilead to license a generic version of lenacapavir: https://peoplesmedicines.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gilead-Open-Letter_May-2024.pdf

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