ViiV HEALTHCARE AT ICASA: IMPROVING ACCESS TO HIV TREATMENT AND CARE FOR PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

ViiV Healthcare will be present at the 18th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) in Harare from November 29th to December 3rd. As with any congress that we attend, we will be engaging with healthcare professionals and community advocates about our commitment to people living with HIV.

We do this through the innovative treatments that we develop and make available, through the healthcare professional education programmes that we support and facilitate, and through the numerous community programmes that we support via our Positive Action programmes to tackle the obstacles to optimal HIV care. We will post regular updates on our website and on our Twitter account (@ViiVHC).

One of the questions that we get often asked at congresses is what we are doing to improve access to our treatments, probably even more so at ICASA given that tackling HIV on the African continent presents unique challenges. We are committed to playing our part in addressing access to medicines challenges by taking an innovative, responsible, and sustainable approach.

Our approach takes into account that pricing of treatment is important but also acknowledges that the access challenge is multi-faceted and is affected by many other factors. These factors include healthcare resources, number of clinics and hospitals, distribution networks, numbers of trained healthcare providers, levels of patient literacy, stigma and discrimination, political will as well as prioritisation of HIV care in government budgets.

Our access approach is two-fold:

1. In collaboration with the HIV community, we support communities most affected by the disease through programmes that have a direct and sustainable impact. We partner with organisations around the world to support a range of interventions that tackle the many barriers to HIV treatment and care. Click here to read more about these programmes: [https://www.viivhealthcare.com/community-partnerships.aspx].
   
2. Our access to medicines approach covers all middle-income countries, low-income countries, least developed countries and sub-Saharan countries – 138 countries in total. You can read more about it here: [https://www.viivhealthcare.com/media/112407/viiv-healthcare-access-to-medicines-policy-final.pdf]