Jannsen Pharmaceuticals, a part of New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, has made available the drug Bedaquiline free to India for use in hospitals in the cities of Guwahati, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Mumbai, and New Delhi only on patients who meet certain criteria for multi drug-resistant tuberculosis.
The Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi TB Hospital in the north eastern part of India has become the first state in Asia to offer this drug exclusively to patients who have failed to respond to standard first-line and second-line anti-TB drugs, reports BioSpecturm.
Nayan Jyoti Das, the joint director of health services and the state officer for India’s TB control program, said, “Many TB patients develop resistance to several drugs. But with the launch of bedaquiline, it will be possible to treat such patients.”
TB remains a global epidemic with over two billion people harboring its latent infection and more than 9 million cases of which 500,000 are multi-drug resistant (MDR-TB). India accounts for 23 per cent of global TB cases and deaths. An estimated 2.2 million people suffer from TB in India with over 70,000 MDR TB patients.
