At ViiV Healthcare* we are committed to playing our part in addressing access to medicines challenges by taking an innovative, responsible, and sustainable approach.

In 2020, 37.7 million people globally were living with HIV, and as of the end of June 2021, 28.2 million people had access to antiretroviral therapy (ART).¹ Scaling-up access to treatment to ensure that all people living with HIV have access to people-centred HIV treatment and care is a significant part of the global HIV response and the 2025 UN HIV target to achieve 95% treatment coverage.² Not only does sustained access to ART lead to better medical and psycho-social outcomes for people living with HIV, there is now a growing body of evidence that shows that effective ART can act as a robust prevention (Treatment as Prevention [TasP]) method and may help halt the progression of the HIV epidemic.

ViiV Healthcare has a well-established commitment to research, developing and delivering antiretroviral therapies which seek to provide people-centred, long term and high-quality care to support people living with HIV to live full, active and productive lives. Progress in HIV science has delivered a wide range of effective treatments which means that people living with HIV who are on stable treatment cannot pass HIV on to sexual partners (U equals U’. Undetectable equals Untransmittable (‘U=U’).

Despite HIV being preventable and treatable, treatment and care for people living with HIV remains a complex challenge driven by policy and legal barriers, which drive HIV-related marginalisation, stigma, discrimination and criminalisation. Tackling these barriers requires a focus on people living with HIV and communities as well as shared responsibility, accountability, leadership and solidarity across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. This includes – governments, international agencies, civil society, academic institutions, the pharmaceutical industry and others.

To address health inequalities related to medicine access, we take a proactive approach. ViiV Healthcare explores and applies a range of models that are driven by medical and public health needs and priorities to address local HIV epidemics. We use a variety of approaches to support access including research to inform clinical use, policies and guidelines, flexible pricing policy, local manufacturing and capacity building across public health and community systems.

Together with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), and generics manufacturers, we collaborate to accelerate the development, registration, and supply of  generic dolutegravir (DTG)-based antiretroviral therapies across all low-income countries (LICs), least-developed countries (LDCs), all lower-middle-income countries (LMICs), and countries in sub-Saharan Africa.³

In November 2020, we also executed a novel voluntary licence agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) which was created to enable greater access to DTG-based regimens for people living with HIV in four Upper Middle-Income Countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Malaysia). ^4,5 This novel voluntary licensing agreement for DTG-based regimens aims to increase medicine affordability by allowing generics manufacturers to supply generic DTG-based medicines at a significantly reduced price compared to the prevailing local prices at the time the agreement was executed, whilst also being consistent with ViiV’s approach to tiered pricing in middle-income countries (MICs).

We are dedicated to licensing our patents for cabotegravir long-acting (LA) for PrEP and in May 2022, we committed  to negotiate voluntary licensing terms with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to enable access to this prevention health technology as swiftly as possible to help scale-up access across resource limited settings.

*ViiV Healthcare is the only global biopharmaceutical company 100% focused on combating, preventing, and ultimately curing HIV and ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Our shared purpose is to unite science, talent, and technology, to get ahead of a leading chronic and infectious disease for greater health impact. We were established in November 2009, through a science-led partnership between GSK (our majority shareholder) and Pfizer; with Shionogi joining in 2012. We are dedicated to researching and delivering innovative HIV medicines and solutions with an ambition to make HIV a smaller part of people’s lives. In addition, we work in solidarity with HIV communities across the globe, this includes people living with HIV and diverse communities vulnerable to HIV transmission. We collaborate to build multisector partnerships which seek to accelerate progress aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals to leave no person living with HIV behind.