India's pivotal role in the global fight against AIDS: Revolutionising HIV treatment with low-cost antiretroviral drugs

Indian companies witnessed an 18-fold increase in the number of AIDS patients being treated from 2003 to 2009, with 96 of 100 countries purchasing Indian ARVs in 2008, including the sub-Saharan African countries. Indian companies used their large-scale manufacturing processes to produce low cost quality medicines to help facilitate this scale up.

Today, Laurus Labs supplies to 80 percent of the players that participate in the ARV tenders. Cipla's paediatric HIV drug Quadrimune has become a first-in-line treatment, while Macleods is working on drugs to manage advance HIV cases.

Other prominent contributors in the fight against HIV have been foundations or programmes. For example, the Clinton Health Access Intitiation (CHAI), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Access Program. These foundations negotiate with companies to provide lower-priced drugs, diagnostic tests in low- and middle-income countries. For example, Macleods Pharma and Viatris signed an agreement with UNAIDS and CHAI to bring down prices of a paediatric HIV drug by 75 percent in low and middle-income countries in 2020.

The UN-arm UNAIDS on Monday, July 17, released a new report stating that it is possible to end AIDs by 2030.

The UN said the east and southern African regions showed the strongest progress as HIV infections reduced by 57 percent from 2010 at these locations.

Countries such as Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe achieved the ’95-95-95’ targets — 95 percent of the people living with HIV know their status, 95 percent who know they are living with HIV being on lifesaving antiretroviral treatment and 95 percent on treatment being virally supressed.

However, former health secretary JVR Prasada Rao in a column wrote about how threats such as missing political support, negative policy impacts, among a few others can leave this 2030 goal unattainable.

The UN report added that there are 16 more countries, eight in the sub-Saharan Africa, where 65 percent of all the people living with HIV are also close to achieving their targets.

Today the number of people accessing ART treatment has risen four-fold, from 7.7 million in 2010 to 29.8 million in 2022 globally. Last year, 82 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women living with HIV were accessing antiretroviral treatment, up from 46 percent in 2010. This resulted in a 58 percent reduction in new HIV infections in children in the past decade, the lowest since the 1980’s.