On the sidelines of the Regional Committee meeting, UNITAID will hold an event titled ‘Promoting equitable and sustainable access to life-saving innovations in Africa, with a focus on malaria vaccines, regional manufacturing and maternal health’. 

Since its creation, Unitaid has been working with a wide range of partners to identify innovative treatments, tests, and tools; help remove and/or overcome commercial barriers to access and make them available to the populations that need them most. To this end, Unitaid has unlocked ground-breaking access to more than 100 health products to help tackle the world's biggest health challenges such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, women's and children's health, and pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. Unitaid is also involved in cross-cutting areas that strengthen health systems, including access to medical oxygen, regional and national manufacturing of health products, the impact of climate change on health and contributing to universal health coverage. Every year, more than 300 million people worldwide benefit from the products that Unitaid has helped to roll out.

Objectives of the event

1. Foster commitment to innovative and new health products as a means to accelerate progress towards the health-related SDGs in Africa 
2. Promote better understanding of Unitaid's work by AFRO Members States through showcasing success stories and benefits of partnerships 
3. Present opportunities in supporting Member States to scale-up innovative health solutions using the example of the malaria vaccine and upcoming promising health products to improve maternal health
4. Exchange on the perspectives of common interests including:
5. >Appropriate access to better health products for African countries
6. Local manufacturing of health products in Africa, and Unitaid's strategy in this area
7. Potential avenues for cooperation and/or strengthening of cooperation between Unitaid and African partners
8. Role of Member States in ensuring sustainable country-led innovations  
9. Raise the profile of Unitaid and its activities in AFRO 
10. Ministries of Health in AFRO sensitized to the importance of Unitaid's activities and the value of establishing and/or strengthening partnerships with Unitaid
11. Improvement of, among other things:

• Alignment and synergies between African countries and Unitaid on the role of equitable access to life-saving health products for efficient achievement of Universal Health Coverage
• Collaboration between African countries and Unitaid on identifying challenges and solutions to progress towards global health goals and to ensuring rapid scale-up of WHO recommended more efficient health products  
• Strengthening partnerships between Ministries of Health in AFRO and Unitaid