Access to antibiotics.
Sustainable and equitable access to antibiotics is critical.
Ensuring sustainable and equitable access to antibiotics for those in need is a critical component in the global response to the escalating crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Yet, many barriers – including shortages, supply chain bottlenecks and a lack of affordability, diagnostics and disease surveillance – prevent millions of people from getting the antibiotics they need. When new antibiotics first enter the market, they are usually only registered in a handful of predominantly wealthy nations and normally priced out of reach for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Sustainable access requires evidence for optimal use, predictable markets, adequate supply, robust distribution pathways and clear plans for antibiotic introduction and responsible use.
People die from a lack of access to antibiotics, with the majority in LMICs.
of 1.5 million carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative infections in eight LMICs were treated with the most appropriate antibiotics.
Deaths can be prevented by 2050 by improving access to effective antibiotics.
of new antibiotics were registered in more than ten countries – predominantly high-income countries – between 1999-2014.
GARDP’s approach to sustainable access.
Sustainable access is factored into everything GARDP does, from scientific discovery and R&D, including clinical trial design and implementation, to support for the manufacturing, registration and introduction of treatments. We ensure antibiotic treatments are tailored to the specific public health needs, prioritizing populations most at-risk, including those often excluded from clinical trials, such as newborns, women, and people living with HIV/AIDS.
In addition, GARDP’s unique integrated R&D and access model makes use of innovative licensing agreements and market shaping activities to help ensure the medicines we co-develop are available and affordable in high-burden, resource-limited settings.
GARDP has dedicated access-related activities in high-burden LMICs. This involves:
- Collaborating with local partners to carry out vital studies that identify disease risks and antibiotic needs
- Working with regulatory authorities to accelerate registrations
- Carrying out catalytic market shaping activities, using demand forecasting, pooled procurement, stockpiling and volume guarantees to help make GARDP portfolio antibiotics more affordable and available
- Working with governments and local experts to generate evidence that can inform AMR National Action Plans.
Our vision for access
Developing and disseminating best practices
on antibiotic access.
Ensuring accessibility
To facilitate availability, affordability, and appropriate access to GARDP’s portfolio of products.
Defining access pathways
By developing and demonstrating diverse access models, using portfolio products as “pathfinders”.
Enabling
pathways
To strengthen the global AMR access ecosystem, including drug optimization, pooled procurement and stewardship initiatives.
Programme goals
GARDP aims to demonstrate how its unique antibiotic R&D partnership model can help address the global AMR public health failure by enabling the right antibiotic treatments to be developed and made available to people who need them.
The Access programme has therefore set the following goals:
Goal 1
Improve access to new and existing antibiotics in GARDP’s portfolio that are effective against drug-resistant infections, by removing the barriers that prevent countries from introducing them.
Goal 2
Use GARDP’s portfolio products as pathfinders to create a new antibiotic R&D and access ecosystem that factors access into every stage of the process – from scientific discovery and R&D, to the manufacturing, registration and introduction of treatments.
Goal 3
Support country efforts to address drug-resistant infections by expanding access to optimized antibiotic portfolios in a sustainable, equitable and appropriate way.
Our access projects
Cefiderocol
Developed by the Japanese pharmaceutical firm Shionogi, cefiderocol has been identified by GARDP as a potentially important antibiotic to help stop the rise and spread of AMR. Like most new antibiotics when they are first developed, cefiderocol is only available in a handful of high-income countries. In LMICs, access to Reserve antibiotics like cefiderocol would normally be delayed by more than a decade, if they get access at all.
GARDP is now changing that through its innovative use of licensing and technology transfer agreements.
SECURE
SECURE is a joint initiative between GARDP and WHO aimed at helping countries, particularly LMICs, expand sustainable, equitable, and appropriate access to essential antibiotics – both generic ones that are not widely available and newly approved Reserve treatments that are kept as a last resort for difficult-to-treat drug-resistant infections.
Through supply planning and sharing forecasting and procurement tools with countries, GARDP and WHO aim to improve decision-making and reduce antibiotic shortages.
