Following Friday’s (Sept. 29) historic announcement that, in low- and middle-income countries, Johnson & Johnson will not enforce patents on bedaquiline, a key drug in the fight against multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), Partners In Health CEO Dr. Sheila Davis shares the following statement:
For decades, progress in the fight against MDR-TB has been too slow. Too many people have gotten sick. Too many people have not had access to modern medicine. And too many people have died.
Just a few weeks ago, countless people of conscience intensified the decades-long pressure on Johnson & Johnson to increase access to bedaquiline. These activists built a movement based on TB survivors, governments, health care providers, among others.
On Friday, their pleas were answered. Johnson & Johnson’s announcement is an encouraging example of solidarity and will make a real difference in the lives of half a million people who get sick each year with MDR-TB.
PIH has been researching MDR-TB, advocating on behalf of sufferers and providing care for people in low- and middle-income countries since 1996. Two of our co-founders, Dr. Paul Farmer and Dr. Jim Kim, were at the forefront of the fight for care for people with MDR-TB in low-income countries. Subsequently, through direct collaborations between PIH and ministries of health, hundreds of thousands of people with MDR-TB have been treated where we work.
But it has never been enough. News like Friday’s means that we, like others around the world, will be able to expand and strengthen our efforts, moving ever closer to providing the care that people affected by TB deserve and putting an end to this terrible disease.
We have much work ahead of us in the fight for global health equity, and specifically in addressing the cruel inequities of TB. Hundreds of thousands of people with MDR-TB go undiagnosed and untreated each year. Recent progress has also been made in [lowering] the cost of one diagnostic tool, Cepheid’s Xpert MTB/RIF cartridge.
But huge gaps will remain as long as commercial producers of medical supplies are allowed to unilaterally set prices and conditions for how those supplies are obtained. As PIH trustee John Green recently told the UN High Level Meeting on TB, “Patients are where the inputs are not, and the inputs are where the patients are not.”
Let’s keep pushing to bring high-quality care to all who need it.
From Socios En Salud we will continue to be vigilant and advocate for this and other medical supplies to reach those who need them most: the most vulnerable communities in Peru and the world.
