Evolving access pathways for long-acting HIV prevention products

IAVI’s vision is a world where all people have equitable access to innovative therapeutics and prevention products. Identifying pathways to expand affordable, timely, and sustainable access to new technologies is a global health imperative.

Currently, a dynamic and robust pipeline of novel products, including antiretrovirals (ARVs) and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), holds the potential to deliver longer-acting, more user-friendly HIV prevention options. But tremendous barriers exist to making innovations widely available once they are shown to be effective.

A new IAVI publication — Evolving access pathways for long-acting HIV prevention products — offers a roadmap for expeditious introduction of future products. Based on interviews with 57 experts from leading global health agencies, the Evolving access pathways report describes potential barriers and recommends key actions to accelerate broad access to novel long-acting HIV prevention products.

These include:

• Begin early to ensure products are designed with user needs in mind and to plan for roll-out.
• Build innovative partnerships to catalyze R&D, mobilize co-investment, and enable low-cost manufacturing.
• Strengthen coordination, working from early development through product introduction.
• Streamline regulatory pathways by building capacity and expanding use of reliance-based and harmonized regulatory pathways.
• Gather clinical and programmatic evidence concurrently to avoid delays in widespread scale-up of new products.
• Invest in future technologies because political will and financial commitment will be needed.
• Pool procurement, sustainably, to expand global availability for future HIV prevention products.
• Re-imagine product design and delivery to address acceptability and implementation barriers early.

To learn more, download the full report.