HIV/AIDS PANDEMIC: “To Know Even One Life Has Breathed Easier…”
BY JUDY BYRON, OP
At the turn of the century, the global health pandemic of HIV/AIDS compelled faith-based shareholders to begin engaging 13 pharmaceutical companies around issues of access to medicines. The Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment (NWCRI) led the work through our dialogue with Gilead Sciences, a pharmaceutical company with a longstanding commitment to developing new HIV treatments.
At one of Gilead’s annual meetings, we obtained the backing of almost a third of its shareholders in support of a proposal asking the company why health care providers in Africa did not have a dependable supply of Gilead’s two key HIV medicines. We then met with the company leadership and left the meeting with the company’s commitment to address access issues.
At the time, only hundreds of thousands of people were receiving a Gilead HIV drug. Today, Gilead Sciences’ mission to help end the HIV epidemic has resulted in 16.5 million people in low- and middle-income countries having access to one of Gilead’s HIV therapies.
In March 2006, then-First Lady Laura Bush invited NWCRI and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) to the White House for an event celebrating the Mothers-To-Mothers to Be program.
The initiative started in 2001, when new HIV infections were at their peak in South Africa and pregnant women could not access treatment to prevent their babies from being born HIV positive. Already, we were recognized as effective advocates in providing HIV therapy for people living in low-and middle-income countries.
(PEPFAR2), which developed additional partnerships to treat pediatric AIDS. In 2023, there were 1.4 million children living with HIV, almost half of what that number was in 2014. It is estimated that PEPFAR has saved over 26 million lives between 2003 and 2024.
Meanwhile, our work toward ending the AIDS epidemic continued. In 2010, the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), a United Nations-backed public health organization, was established to improve low- and middle-income countries’ access to affordable HIV medicines. A year later, ICCR convened a round table with 50 key stakeholders, including pharmaceutical companies, to discuss how companies could overcome barriers licensing their patents with the MPP.
In 2011, Gilead Sciences was the first to join the MPP. Today 22 patent holders have signed agreements granting licenses to 56 generic companies, allowing them to develop critical medicines for the world’s poor. In the beginning, the MPP focused on HIV drugs; currently it also accepts licenses for hepatitis and tuberculosis treatments.
In December 2014, on World AIDS Day, AbbVie, another large pharmaceutical company, granted a license to the MPP for two of its pediatric HIV treatments, which the World Health Organization then recognized as the most effective treatment for children under age 3. At the time, it was estimated that 3.2
“The toll from AIDS is enormous, but the numbers cannot capture the consequences.”
—LAURA BUSH (PEPFAR)
Today, that program is known as mothers2mothers1 (m2m), and it employs community health workers living with HIV to carry out its mission of ending AIDS and preventable diseases and achieving health for all. 25 years after its founding, m2m has achieved virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, with a transmission rate of 0% in 2023.
At the White House event, Laura Bush announced a new initiative of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
1. https://m2m.org/ 2 https://www.state.gov/pepfar/
https://medicinespatentpool.org/who-we-are/
million children were living with HIV, the majority of whom were in low-income regions.
Faith-based shareholders, drug companies, international organizations, and the U.S. government have partnered for more than 20 years to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic and give all in our world community life and hope. How do we measure our success? With the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.”