Twenty years ago, as the world prepared to welcome the new millennium, more than 34.3 million people were living with the HIV/AIDS virus. Two thirds of them, about 24.5 million people, were in countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and most of them were women and children.
Transmission rates in sub-Saharan countries were on the rise, access to adequate care was lowest in the world and resources were extremely limited. HIV/AIDS had become the leading cause of death and was threatening the region’s very future.
As a global pharmaceutical company with a strong portfolio of HIV therapies, Bristol-Myers Squibb took on a major role in the fight against the disease. In 1999, together with the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, the company launched SECURE THE FUTURE, a groundbreaking commitment that helped transform how healthcare was delivered in the region.
Through collaborations and partnerships with governments, international agencies – including the World Health Organization, UNAIDS and Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) – as well as non-governmental, community- and faith-based organizations, SECURE THE FUTURE created a model of care for HIV that was not only sustainable, but that could be replicated and applied to other disease areas.
“When we started SECURE THE FUTURE, we not only looked to build local and national capacity and help inform countries’ HIV/AIDS plans, but to develop lessons and experiences for addressing health disparities among women and children across various therapeutic areas,” says John Damonti, President, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. “Through our partnerships and programs, we helped restore hope for children and families living with HIV/AIDS and gave communities in sub-Saharan Africa the confidence and resources they needed to properly care for patients.”
Since its inception, SECURE THE FUTURE oversaw the investment of more than $240 million for more than 250 programs that trained tens of thousands of health care providers, increased capacity for care at hospitals and clinics, raised awareness about HIV and its prevention and increased community-based support for children and families affected by the disease.
SECURE THE FUTURE’s impact on pediatric care was landmark. The initiative brought together the Foundation, BIPAI and the governments of five sub-Saharan countries: Botswana, Lesotho, eSwatini, Uganda and Tanzania to create the largest pediatric HIV treatment network in the world. To date, BIPAI has treated more than 1 million children and currently has more than 300,000 directly in care, 40 percent of whom are now teenagers and adolescents.
Today, SECURE THE FUTURE’s focus has evolved to help address the African continent’s next major health challenge, cancer. Many people with HIV are now living longer; they are not dying of the virus but rather of non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension and cancer. SECURE THE FUTURE has created partnerships based on years of experience in HIV that can also address lung, cervical, breast and pediatric cancers and blood disorders.
In 2017, BIPAI, the Texas Children’s Hospital Cancer and Hematology Centers and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation launched Global HOPE (Hematology-Oncology Pediatric Excellence), the first comprehensive program to treat children with cancer and blood disorders. As with HIV, disparities in cancer care between Africa and other parts of the world are significant. In the U.S., pediatric cancer has a survival rate of 80 percent, compared to a mortality rate as high as 90 percent in Africa.
“Through SECURE THE FUTURE, we innovated models of care delivery, building capacity of our local African health professionals to care and treat children and women with life-threatening disease,” says Phangisile Mtshali, Director, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. “Through our lessons learned, we extended our reach in sub-Saharan Africa by creating community-based treatment support programs that helped deliver antiretroviral therapy in rural and hard-to-reach areas. Our partnership with WHO Global TB Programme was influential in shaping the policy and practice around monitoring and reporting community efforts to finding missing tuberculosis cases. We are now taking all of those lessons learned and applying them to address pediatric, lung and cervical cancers, which are robbing Africa of brighter future and of gains made from the HIV successes.”