MSF wants to buy groundbreaking HIV prevention drug. Why won’t Gilead sell?
Blocking humanitarian organizations from accessing a medical breakthrough puts people who are vulnerable across the world in danger.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sent an open letter to the U.S. pharmaceutical corporation Gilead Sciences on March 30, calling on the company to immediately sell to MSF, lenacapavir, an HIV medicine that is one of the most important advances in HIV prevention in decades.
About 1.3 million people worldwide acquire HIV every year, underscoring the critical need to scale up access to highly effective prevention tools such as long-action pre-exposure prophylaxis medications. MSF, an international medical humanitarian organisation, focuses HIV prevention activities on people who are among those most vulnerable, like men who have sex with men, transgender individuals and sex workers, and works in conflict and other fragile settings. Access to HIV prevention medicines and maintaining adherence to taking daily doses can be extremely difficult. Long-acting HIV prevention tools like lenacapavir, which only needs to be given twice a year by injection, can therefore be lifesaving for people at high HIV risk.
Despite Gilead’s public claims that it can expand production of lenacapavir to meet needs, the company has refused requests from MSF to purchase a limited supply for use in our programs. So far, only a handful of countries of the 18 eligible under the Gilead and Global Fund agreement have received doses of lenacapavir, while millions of people remain at high risk of HIV infection worldwide.
Gilead has directed MSF to source doses through the Global Fund, even though their supply is fixed and insufficient – enough for up to two million people over three years, which is well below the global need. Furthermore, some countries where MSF works are not eligible to receive doses through the Global Fund due to restrictions put in place by Gilead.
“Blocking humanitarian organisations from accessing a medical breakthrough puts vulnerable people in danger,” Dr Tom Ellman, director of the Southern Africa Medical Unit (SAMU) in MSF, says. “Gilead must decide whether it prioritizes protecting people or protecting control and profit. This is a chilling echo of the policies we saw in the 1990s when antiretrovirals were provided to those in the Global North, while the rest of the world was denied access and many lives were lost to HIV/AIDS.”
MSF has requested an urgent follow-up meeting with Gilead by April 13 to reconsider whether they will sell lenacapavir directly, at what price it will be sold and when supply can begin.
