Bedaquiline: Latest TB drug report in India

Six months after the launch of ‘miracle’ drug bedaquiline — the most effective treatment for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis — the Indian government has enrolled a mere 36 patients.

About:

Bedaquiline is used exclusively to treat patients who have failed to respond to second-line anti-TB medicines.

• India had received a donation of 300 doses from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with another batch of 300 doses to be donated next year.
• India has been really remiss with its bedaquiline programme. Since it was announced, only a handful of patients have been enrolled.
• For a country as advanced as India, with thousands of patients who would benefit from new drugs, this glacial pace is really disappointing. Other countries like South Africa,Swaziland or even Belarus have accomplished so much. They have put nearly 5% of their MDR TB patients on bedaquiline within a year. India has made a lot of promises about new drugs on paper but they are failing to deliver.

Who hold patent right on Bedaquiline?

As part of a Compassionate Access Programme (CAP), the pharmaceutical company Janssen that holds the patent for this drug, had donated 600 doses to USAID, which gave half of the medicines to the Indian government in March this year.

• The drug was to be introduced in six hospitals in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Guwahati and later be introduced in 104 districts in five States.

WHO on Tuberculosis in India:

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), India shoulders 71,000 multi-drug resistant tuberculosis patients. Its report says nearly 10 per cent of all multi-drug resistant TB patients have extensively drug resistant TB or XDR-TB — “resistant to any fluoroquinolone, and at least one of three second-line injectable drugs (capreomycin, kanamycin and amikacin), in addition to multidrug resistance.”

• Since this is the first drug in decades to dramatically improve MDR-TB treatment outcomes, the government set stringent eligibility criteria, allowing only patients residing close to the treatment centres.