Breakthroughs Blog: HIV/AIDS

Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email.The world remains unprepared to respond to future pandemics, warns the Global Health Security (GHS) Index report released last week assessing the efforts of 195 countries. The index, based on public information, measured each country’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to health emergencies in 2021 along with other factors, like public confidence in government. The average country score for 2021 was 38.9 out of a possible 100, similar to that of the first GHS Index in 2019, and no country scored above 75.9. The report outlines key findings—most notably that all countries remain dangerously unprepared for meeting future epidemic and pandemic threats, despite many countries being able to quickly develop capacities to address COVID-19—and offers recommendations to use this opportunity to make new capacities more durable for further long-term gains in preparedness.The US Agency for International Development on Monday announced the creation of the Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, or Global VAX, a new initiative to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination efforts around the world. Global VAX will aim to get COVID-19 shots into arms as well as enhance international coordination to identify and rapidly overcome access barriers, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. These efforts will include bolstering cold chain supply and logistics, service delivery, vaccine confidence and demand, human resources, data and analytics, local planning, and vaccine safety and effectiveness. The US government will supply $400 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to support this work, adding to the $1.3 billion that has been previously committed for vaccine readiness.An experimental mRNA-based HIV vaccine showed promise in early animal studies, according to study results published Thursday. The research, conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Moderna, and other institutions, showed the vaccine was safe and prompted antibody and cellular immune responses against an HIV-like virus in mice and monkeys. Rhesus macaques that received a priming shot followed by multiple boosters had a 79 percent lower per-exposure risk of infection by simian-human immunodeficiency virus compared to unvaccinated animals. The mRNA vaccine, which uses the same technology deployed in two effective COVID-19 vaccines, combines several features that could help overcome shortcomings of other experimental HIV vaccines, according to NIAID.

At GHTC, we get to read stories every day about incredible innovations in global health. Most of the technologies we see are inventive, some are revolutionary, and a few are so unusual, one might think they were ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel. Now, we’re testing how well you know these global health technologies with our annual Halloween game: the TRICK or TREATment quiz.For each question, we will present a description of a global health technology. Choose TREATment if you believe this innovation exists and has market approval. Choose TRICK if you think we are trying to pull one over on you and, instead, the product is still in development or is just a figment of our imagination.  Loading...(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k

Last week, the world waited with bated breath to see whether G20 health ministers would seize the moment at their annual summit to take bold and necessary action to end the pandemic, build the global health architecture for the future, and recommit to health priorities that have taken a back seat during the past two years.The answer was rather muddled. The G20 health ministers did agree on several key principles and high-level priorities, many of which were positive, but their health declaration stopped short of providing a clear road map to translate these ambitions into concrete actions. Advocates were particularly disappointed in the lack of immediate actions, including calls for specific financial commitments, to address the shameful inequities in rollout and ongoing acute needs for COVID-19 vaccines and other tools.While the G20 didn’t provide much specificity regarding new pledges, it did highlight the importance of research and development (R&D) in all aspects of global health, including bolstering pandemic preparedness, combatting antimicrobial resistance (AMR), achieving universal health coverage (UHC), and strengthening digital health. As discussions in other forums such as the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Global Health Security Agenda ramp up, G20 leaders have set the framework from which to build concrete reforms to the international system.Putting R&D at the core of the agenda This year’s G20 health declaration included strong language on R&D throughout. In discussing the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, pandemic preparedness initiatives, and reinvestment in key programs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and UHC, G20 leaders put R&D front and center. One particularly encouraging sign was the explicit callout from health ministers acknowledging R&D as a central pillar of pandemic preparedness, something that was notably absent in global health security frameworks, including the International Health Regulations, prior to the start of the pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the need to enshrine greater global governance and coordination of R&D into the global health security architecture. The mention by G20 health leaders acknowledges a political shift on the issue and increases the prospects that R&D coordination and governance provisions will be integrated into a potential pandemic treaty and other WHO reform discussions in the coming months. The G20 health declaration also underlined the continued commitment toward combatting AMR, including by developing new safe and effective antimicrobials and sustaining reliable supply and production of existing antimicrobials. For the past few years, the agenda for the G20 has consistently included AMR with a focus on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), which is estimated to account for one-third of all AMR-related deaths globally. Leaders recognized that sustainable and robust resources for TB R&D are needed to accelerate development of new tools and deliver on previous commitments from the G20 and the UN high-level panels on TB, AMR, and UHC.Health ministers underscored the need to strengthen the resilience of supply chains; increase and diversify global, local, and regional vaccine manufacturing capacity; and build expertise for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Acknowledging that equitable access to medical countermeasures continues to be a major challenge, global leaders recognized the need to develop more balanced systems and infrastructure that provide greater coverage and capacity in LMICs. G20 leaders also reiterated that while vaccines have been at the top of everyone’s agenda, we must ensure that all countermeasures, especially therapeutics including oxygen therapies and diagnostics, are reprioritized as key elements of global response efforts and that the pipeline for new countermeasures continues to receive investments. Given the accelerated development of new diagnostic tools and the scale of testing needed for COVID-19, it was a positive development that G20 nations acknowledged that the introduction of testing capabilities should also be leveraged for other infectious diseases including TB, malaria, and HIV. To achieve the SDGs by 2030, the systems that are being built to respond to the pandemic must also serve to strengthen health systems overall and help in the fight against other disease threats.Where do we go from here?G20 health ministers reaffirmed their commitment to global solidarity, including by working toward equitable distribution of vaccines and supporting WHO’s goal of vaccinating 40 percent of the global population by the end of 2021. Despite this, no specific pledges were made to provide additional funding to the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, nor did leaders commit to increase vaccine dose sharing to address the acute needs of LMICs.The lack of specific targets or road maps for how to achieve the outlined principles and new investment pledges by G20 countries means that leaders must now work out how to operationalize these ideas in other multilateral meetings this fall. Many advocates are now pinning their hopes on the Biden administration’s call to convene heads of state at a Global COVID-19 Summit next week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and looking for tangible actions during the G20 Joint Health and Finance Ministers’ Meeting or World Health Assembly deliberations on a new pandemic treaty or framework convention.These forums will now have to pick up the baton, since we need global governance to be more inclusive, equitable, and accountable. This G20 health ministers’ declaration was a step in the right direction, as it set a framework for improving global health R&D coordination and governance, but it put the onus on other forums to follow through with concrete actions. Global leaders must now seize the moment and deliver on their promises. 

Interested in more global health innovation news? Every week GHTC scours media reports worldwide to deliver essential global health R&D news and content to your inbox. Sign up now to receive our weekly R&D News Roundup email. Moderna and Novavax are both developing vaccines for combined protection against COVID-19 and the flu, the companies announced last week. Moderna is working on a single-dose vaccine that combines a booster dose of its authorized COVID-19 and a booster of its furthest along experimental flu shot. Novavax has launched an early-stage trial for a combined flu and COVID-19 vaccine composed of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, not yet authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration, and its influenza shot NanoFlu, along with an adjuvant or vaccine booster. The Novavax trial will be conducted in Australia among 640 healthy adults between the ages of 50 and 70 who have been previously infected with COVID-19 or given an authorized COVID-19 vaccine at least eight weeks prior to the study. Results are expected in the first half of 2022.The COVAX vaccine-sharing facility’s global vaccine deliveries will fall almost 30 percent below its original target of distributing 2 billion doses in 2021, the initiative’s leaders estimate. The new supply forecast predicts another 1.1 billion doses will be made available this year, in addition to the 330 million already released for delivery before the end of August, for an estimated total of 1.4 billion vaccine deliveries by the end of 2021. The shortfall is the result of a variety of factors, including restrictions on exports from the Serum Institute of India, problems increasing manufacturing at vaccine facilities, and lags in regulatory approval, according to COVAX leaders. Under the most likely forecast, COVAX would reach 2 billion available doses between January and February of 2022.COVID-19 has set back the fight against other global health challenges like HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria, according to a report released by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Compared to 2019, the number of people tested and treated for TB fell by about 18 percent in 2020—and the number of people treated for extensively drug-resistant TB by 37 percent. The number of people who sought testing for HIV declined by 22 percent, and those opting for HIV prevention services fell by 12 percent. However, the report also noted the adoption of innovations, from dispensing multi-month supplies of TB and HIV drugs to using digital tools to monitor TB treatment, adopted by health agencies and ministries around the world, which will hopefully outlast the pandemic.