Unitaid

What if one of the greatest opportunities to improve child health isn’t developing new tools, but delivering existing ones more effectively?

Pulse oximetry helps identify children with dangerously low oxygen levels, enabling earlier treatment and better outcomes. But experience shows that availability alone is not enough.

Its impact depends on whether health workers can use it routinely, whether oxygen is available when needed, and whether health systems are designed to support effective care.

In our latest blog, we explore what pulse oximetry can teach us about scaling impact, and why stronger delivery systems are just as important as innovation.

Lenacapavir could expand HIV prevention options globally, strengthening the range of tools available for people at risk.

The recent rollout in South Africa is an important milestone. It also reflects a broader reality in global health: innovation alone does not guarantee access.

Ensuring impact requires deliberate action to shape markets.

Market shaping addresses the barriers that can delay or limit access, including price, supply constraints, licensing arrangements, and the risks manufacturers face when entering lower-income markets. Without these measures, even highly effective innovations can take years to reach scale.

Through coordinated efforts, Unitaid and partners are supporting a pathway to generic lenacapavir at an expected price of 40 USD per person per year, helping move from breakthrough science to sustainable affordability. Access turns innovation into impact.

Health systems are being tested like never before.

“The current conflict is a reminder that access to health products depends not only on scientific breakthroughs, but also on resilient systems that can withstand disruption.”
— Vincent Bretin, Director, Results & Climate, Unitaid

From climate change to conflict and global shocks, the challenges facing health systems are growing, and innovation must keep pace.

Today, dependence on fossil fuels across health supply chains creates a hidden vulnerability, putting the availability, affordability and reliability of essential health products at risk.

Building resilience means transforming the way health products are developed, produced and delivered: from accelerating low-carbon innovation, to strengthening supply chains, reducing emissions in manufacturing and logistics, and rethinking how care reaches communities.

In an increasingly unstable world, resilient health systems are not optional, they are foundational to equitable access to care.

Read more below.

The Lancet
Asian Development Bank
HealthCareWithoutHarm

A new step forward in HIV prevention in South Africa.

Today, the first doses of lenacapavir were rolled out, marking an important milestone in expanding access to a long-acting HIV prevention option given just twice a year.

For many people, this could mean a prevention option that fits more easily into daily life, with fewer clinic visits and less frequent dosing.

South Africa carries one of the highest burdens of HIV globally, making access to new prevention options especially important.

At Unitaid, we are working with partners to help ensure this innovation can reach the people who need it most, supporting implementation, advancing regional manufacturing, and helping pave the way for affordable generic versions expected to cost around $40 per person per year.

Because prevention only works when it reaches the people who need it most.