Empowering Global Advocacy: How RCF’s Core Funding Strengthened ITPC’s Access-to-Medicines Campaign

As a global consortium lead and grassroots advocate, ITPC focuses on national-level change by supporting local, community-led organizations of people living with HIV and has received long-term core funding from the Robert Carr Fund (RCF) since 2013. 

Affordability is a key determinant when governments decide to scale up HIV or TB treatment. Intellectual property (IP) monolies are significant barrier for access to medicines as those limit competition from generics manufacturers which produce cheaper medicines. For example, bedaquiline— the core DR-TB medicine—remained prohibitively expensive in many low- and middle-income countries due to pharmaceutical patent monopolies. To address IP barriers, ITPC and its partners launched the “Make Medicines Affordable” campaign in 2014, building community-based organizations capacity to challenge intellectual property barriers and reduce prices.

Since 2014, ITPC has invested in empowering community representatives through Patent Opposition Academies, teaching them how to challenge patents. Since 2020, ITPC-supported community-based NGOs filed 20 patent oppositions to remove monopolies on bedaquiline in Belarus, Brazil, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Thailand, Ukraine, Vietnam. Their efforts—together with broader NGO advocacy—helped secure J&J’s 2023 announcement of non-enforcement of patents on bedaquiline in 134 low- and middle-income countries, enabling multiple generics manufacturers to enter the market and driving down prices.

This opened the market to generics producers, driving Bedaquiline prices down by 78  percent. Wider availability of BPaL regimen (containing bedaquiline) is expected to boost MDR-TB cure rates from 59 percent to 90 percent and save governments an estimated US $31 million to $91 million over six years.

In 2024, ITPC achieved another landmark in Colombia by securing the country’s first ever compulsory license for dolutegravir, a vital HIV treatment. ITPC supported local partner IFARMA Foundation to advocate and defend the compulsory licensing process—despite GSK’s legal challenge—and by early 2025, the first generic dolutegravir arrived, slashing the price from US $94 to $3,75 per pack, leading to estimated savings of more than 72 million US dollars.

Since then, 798 788 packs of dolutegravir have been secured. Distribution is currently underway in 14 cities, targeting the Venezuelan migrant population through Global Fund support. Meanwhile, additional units intended for Colombia’s national health system are undergoing final preparation before deployment.

RCF’s core funding has been critical to ITPC’s sustainability and impact. RCF’s resources have allowed ITPC to build a strong program team, establish robust financial and compliance systems, and grow its capacity to secure larger multi-country grants.

Without RCF long term support, we wouldn’t have a strong program team, financial, grants and compliance staff, or the capacity to secure significant funding from large institutional donors. RCF’s support helped us build the workforce needed to become eligible and satisfy very strict donor requirements. Our financial and compliance systems—procurement procedures, strategic planning, and staff—are funded by RCF’s core grants; without this, we could not operate globally at such a large global scale.

Nadia Rafif, ITPC Advocacy and Influence Lead