GENEVA: Gilead could bring the AIDS pandemic towards an end if the United States pharmaceutical giant opens up access to its game-changing new HIV drug, the head of UNAIDS told AFP.

Winnie Byanyima urged Gilead to "make history" by allowing generic manufacturing of Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable antiretroviral medication used to treat HIV patients.

She urged Gilead to open up Lenacapavir to the United Nations-backed Medicines Patent Pool international organisation, whereby cheaper generic versions could be sold under licence in low- and middle-income nations.

Whatever the financial rewards of creating Lenacapavir, the renown of being the company that conquered the AIDS pandemic would be greater, Byanyima said.

"Gilead has an opportunity to take us closer to ending AIDS as a public health threat," Byanyima said in an interview at UNAIDS' headquarters in Geneva.

"Gilead has an opportunity to save the world. To save the world, literally," from the pandemic.

"They can be the company that wins a Nobel Prize, for example. Reward doesn't come just through money. There is also recognition... imagine how great it would be."

While around 10 million people with HIV still need to be reached with antiretroviral therapy, around 30 million are on such treatment.

Byanyima, the executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, said this was only possible thanks to innovations from pharmaceutical companies like Gilead.

But Lenacapavir is "so highly effective, it's in a different category of preventive medicines", she said.

Byanyima said the drug would help the hardest to reach.

"Those people hiding from the law - gay men, trans women - who could come out just twice a year to get their injection and be safe", she said, not to mention young women in Africa, fearing stigma and domestic violence.

Lenacapavir was approved for use for HIV patients in the US and the European Union in 2022. It is available from around US$40,000 a year in the US.

It is also being tested for potential pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use, to prevent people without HIV from getting the virus - with very promising interim results.

Byanyima insisted that through tiered pricing - for example someone in Nepal paying a fraction of the price of someone in Britain - Gilead could still turn a profit on Lenacapavir.

"We could come close to ending this disease," she insisted.

Gilead has previously said it is in talks with governments and organisations "as we work to reach our access goals".

 -AFP