Poor countries must not be forgotten in the Covid-19 battle, Unitaid director warns
Founded more than a dozen years ago, Unitaid has received more than $3 billion in donations for its work to research and identify solutions to such tenacious diseases as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
The global organization, which is hosted by the World Health Organization, has helped lower prices and to widen access to various medicines to vulnerable populations through its work with the Medicines Patent Pool, which licenses treatments from drug makers. In keeping with that mission, Unitaid recently endorsed the idea of having the WHO create a voluntary pool to collect intellectual property, which would gather patents, regulatory test data and other information to ensure “equitable access” to vaccines, treatments, and other medical products for combating Covid-19.
