Promising progress in the access to Bedaquiline
After years of advocacy, including a recent open letter to J&J on July 11th, and significant public pressure led by journalist John Green through social media during the second week of July, the Stop TB Partnership Global Drug Facility (GDF) and J&J have reached an agreement. This agreement will allow GDF to make generic bedaquiline available for purchase in a majority of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).
- This agreement will lower the price and facilitate access to generic bedaquiline for countries that procure through GDF, but under the agreement, the secondary patents will remain in place.
- The countries excluded from accessing generic bedaquiline under the agreement include those that don't purchase TB medicines through GDF, such as South Africa; 10 countries in the EECA region -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine – due to a pre-existing, exclusive license between Pharmstandard and J&J; and China.
- The overarching barrier to accessing generic bedaquiline in all of these countries is the enforcement of additional patents aimed at extending J&J’s monopoly.
As TBPPM Learning Network, we have collaborated with TAG, MSF and PIH on the 1/4/6x24 campaign and have signed on to the mentioned letter. We, therefore continue to call on J&J to publicly commit to secondary patent non-enforcement and withdrawal to solve the remaining issues blocking access to generic bedaquiline in countries that are left out of the agreement with GDF. We also urge countries excluded from the agreement to consider issuing compulsory licenses to enable urgent access to lower-priced generic bedaquiline.
We will provide regular updates on important developments and future actions. In the meantime, let us continue applying pressure on J&J to ensure that they take the necessary steps to make generic bedaquiline accessible to ALL Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) on equitable terms!
You can add to the social media pressure mounted by John Green @sportswithjohn @johngreen on Twitter by posting with the hashtag #PatientsNotPatents and tagging @JNJNews or @JNJGlobalHealth, and demanding that J&J release the secondary patents and unlock access to generic bedaquiline for all!
Below are a few key links on further information and support from our partners in this call.
For anyone interested in a Summer read that goes further into TB and the context for why this type of advocacy on pharmaceutical companies is so important, please pick up Vidya Krisnan’s book “Phantom Plague” – we have done a ‘book review’ as one of our Friday Forums in which you will find some of the key topics, and summary backgrounds as well.
Another recommended book, we want to add to this list is ‘Black Angels’ by Maria Smilios about TB nurses in NYC – If anyone is willing to read this over the Summer, we can do another Friday Forum book review
We will continue spreading the message that we are part of a “movement for good” in the world.
Links from Partners:
- FAQ on the agreement:
- Statement from Treatment Action Group
- Statement from MSF
- Statement from Partners in Health