Antiretroviral medicines in low- and middle-income countries: forecasts of global and regional demand for 2021–2025

Overview

By the end of 2020, over 25 million people were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) in low- and middle-income countries.

This report aims to provide countries and suppliers with estimates of the global market for antiretroviral (ARV) medicines in low- and middle-income countries for 2021–2025. The report includes estimates of the global demand for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and ARV formulations for adults receiving first-line treatment to enable suppliers to plan adjustments to their manufacturing capacity and processes.

To be consistent with previous reports, this report uses 3 forecasting approaches to project the demand for ART, expressed as the number of people receiving treatment from 2021 to 2025:

• the linear progression model (estimates 35.6 million by 2025)
• the country target model (projects 30.6 million by 2025)
• the 95–95–95 model (estimates 32.4 million)

A multi-partner Technical Working Group convened by WHO coordinated several sources of data on ARV drugs, including the WHO survey on ARV drug use, the Global Price Reporting Mechanism data on procurement, Supply Chain Management System procurement, national guidelines, and CHAI data on drug recipients to consolidate key assumptions and generate the projected demand for active pharmaceutical ingredients.

The figures in this report are not meant to predict the definitive consumption of ARV drugs from 2021 to 2025 but provide a range of possible demand for ARV drugs if current trends continue.