Price for TB Drug Too High, Unaffordable, MSF Says

Thursday, February 25, 2016

International medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have expressed concern over the high price announced for new tuberculosis (TB) drug, delamanid.

A Japanese pharmaceutical company, Otsuka, said that it would make delamanid available to some developing countries at a price of US$1,700 per treatment course.

Delamanid is one of only two new drugs to treat TB to become available in the last half a century, and is effective against the deadliest strains of tuberculosis that are resistant to many of the other drugs used to treat TB, including multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant TB.

Delamanid needs to be taken with several other drugs to effectively treat drug-resistant TB (DR-TB); the regimens, without delamanid, already cost between $1,000 – $4,500 per treatment course at the lowest prices available to developing countries, which is unaffordable for governments.

Source: allAfrica (link opens in a new window)

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