Amid Turbulence, Global Health Innovations Offer Glimmers Of Hope

Forbes

9 hours ago

When (RED), the organization that I lead, first met Concillia, she was on the brink of death. She was living with HIV, but wasn't receiving treatment. She weighed under 100 lbs. and could barely feed herself, let alone look after her young daughter. Access, stigma, and a lack of education kept her from the life-saving medicine she desperately needed.
Then Concillia was connected to a support group of other people living with HIV and began taking antiretroviral medicine. In just 90 days, she was 'resurrected' from death's door. Full of hope and purpose, she soon gave birth to an HIV-free daughter and became a healthcare worker in Lusaka, Zambia to help women just like her. She's living proof that innovation, combined with access, saves lives.
Today, amid the global health chaos and crisis imposed by the United States' abrupt dismantling of USAID, science and innovation are forging new miracles. From breakthrough medicines to AI-powered tools, here are some of the next wave solutions that could accelerate the fight against preventable diseases.
The Promise Of Lenacapavir
While it seldom makes headlines, AIDS is still a deadly crisis in many parts of the world. Roughly every minute someone dies of AIDS-related causes. Today, more people live with HIV than there are people in California. And by the time you're done reading this piece, 10 people will have acquired the virus.
One of the best ways to combat AIDS is to prevent new infections in the first place. If you achieve that, you lower the transmission rates and stop it from spreading. That's why the new long-acting injectable medicine lenacapavir from Gilead Sciences is so promising. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the medicine for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to reduce the risk of adults and adolescents acquiring HIV. Lenacapavir offers individuals protection against HIV for up to six months. Previously, those who were at-risk of acquiring HIV relied on daily PrEP pills that often carried privacy, stigma, and adherence challenges.
The medicine's real potential is in places like Sub-Saharan Africa where two-thirds of all new HIV infections originate. Earlier this month, Gilead Sciences and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (Disclosure: (RED) donates money to the Global Fund) announced a landmark partnership that will supply the long-acting prevention medicine to low-income countries. Under the agreement, Gilead Sciences will supply the Global Fund enough doses to reach up to 2 million people over three years.
'This is not just a scientific breakthrough — it's a turning point for HIV/AIDS,' Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund, said in a statement. 'For the first time, we have a tool that can fundamentally change the trajectory of the HIV epidemic — but only if we get it to the people who need it most.'
When antiretroviral drugs first came on the market, they took years to reach Africa. Millions of people died and many more like Concillia suffered while injustice denied them access to life-saving treatment. Now, low- and middle-income countries will have access to this medicine in a timeline that's similar to wealthy countries. It's a massive win for equity and a sign that things are changing for the better.
High Hopes For Coartem Baby
As Africa prepared for peak malaria season this year, thousands of life-saving bed nets were collecting dust in warehouses across Kenya and Ghana. The nets had already been purchased, but the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID prevented them from being distributed.
Malaria is another underreported health crisis that claims a life nearly every minute. Most of the victims are children under the age of five. Symptoms progress quickly and the disease prey's off developing and weakened immune systems. Newborns and small infants have an especially difficult time metabolizing malaria medicine, making it harder for doctors to determine appropriate dosages, which can lead to treatment delays.
For the first time, a medicine that's designed specifically to treat newborns and infants with malaria has been approved. Coartem Baby, which is produced by Novartis, can now be used on infants weighing less than roughly 10 lbs. The medicine, which received the green light from Switzerland's therapeutic products regulator is expected to be approved soon in eight African countries — Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria, which has the highest total annual malaria deaths of any country. The treatment is expected to be sold at a not-for-profit price, making it accessible to more people.
'When there is a medical need that we can address through the science and technologies that we have, we see that as a call to action,' Lutz Hegemann, president of global health at Novartis, told Semafor.
The AI Drug Revolution
It often costs over $1 billion to bring a new drug to market. Imagine the time and money artificial intelligence could save by predicting a drug's success with near-perfect accuracy.
That's exactly what the team at Alphabet's Ismorphic Labs is working on. The company, which was founded by Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis, is leveraging artificial intelligence to develop new cancer drugs. Using AlphaFold, a program that predicts protein structures, the company is now able to model how these structures will interact with other molecules. Last year, Ismorphic Labs signed research deals with Novartis and Eli Lilly, and this spring the company raised an additional $600 million in its first-ever external funding round.
'One day we hope to be able to say — well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease. All powered by these amazing AI tools,' Ismorphic Labs President Colin Murdoch recently told Fortune.
The company is not alone. Others like Insilico, Recursion, and Xaira Therapeutics are all working on leveraging AI to accelerate drug discovery and bring new tools to market faster and cheaper. These companies have the potential to help create a future where all preventable and treatable diseases are exactly that — preventable and treatable. But only if these innovations reach people like Concillia. Global experts warn that equity, not just evolution, is needed to ensure new developments reach everyone, everywhere.
'The very last thing that we want to see happen as part of this leap forward with technology is the propagation or amplification of inequities and biases in the social fabric of countries around the world,' Alain Labrique, the WHO's director for digital health and innovation recently warned.