Call to action: Accelerate access to DR-TB drugs

civil society
Feb. 25, 2015, 10:42 p.m.
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SIGN ON LETTER to global actors and drug companies: Please provide organizational sign-ons by 6 March.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), ACTION Global Health Advocacy Partnership, SWIFT Response Project, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Treatment Action Group (TAG) and others are calling on global health actors to step up and ensure new and repurposed DR-TB drugs reach people who are otherwise without treatment options.

New drugs to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) have finally been developed; yet long after their approval, they are only available to a tiny fraction of those who urgently need them.

At the end of 2014, little more than 600 people had received bedaquiline through expanded access programmes, and fewer than 10 had received delamanid outside clinical trial settings.

The sign on letter calls for accelerated action to ensure access to new and re-purposed DR-TB drugs, in particular for people experiencing treatment failure who are now left without any treatment options.

To read the letter, click here.

Please provide organizational sign-ons to the letter by 6 March.


Source: Médecins Sans Frontières