DNDI GARDP Southern Africa

DNDi GARDP Southern Africa was established in 2018 and is a non-profit South African company that aims to provide health care services by developing safe, effective and affordable new health technologies that tackle global or regional public health priorities, with a contribution to the fight against antimicrobial resistance and diseases that affect vulnerable and neglected populations. DNDi GARDP Southern Africa represents the interests of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and The Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP) in the region. DNDi & GARDP are not-for-profit Swiss foundations that have a shared vision of public health-needs driven research and development that ensures equitable and sustainable access to affordable treatments. For the ultimate benefit of the populations served by GARDP and DNDi, both organizations have a strong interest in sharing knowledge and resources, exemplified by this joint Southern African office. DNDi focuses on discovering and developing treatments for neglected patients. Since its inception in 2003 DNDi has developed eight new treatments for malaria, sleeping sickness, visceral leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, paediatric HIV with several new drug candidates in the R&D pipeline. Its objective is to deliver 16 to 18 new treatments by 2023, ensure equitable access to these treatments, and build a robust pipeline of new drug candidates. GARDP was initiated in 2016, incubated through a close collaboration between the World Health Organisation and DNDi. GARDP’s mission is to work in partnership with the public and private sectors, to develop and deliver new treatments for bacterial infections where drug resistance is present or emerging, or for which inadequate treatment exists. The current focus areas are STIs (eg. gonorrhoea), antibiotics for children (neonatal sepsis and paediatric infections) and serious bacterial infections in hospitalized adults, and the aim is to deliver 5 new treatments by 2025.