Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders: MSF and TB activists disrupt opening of TB conference to protest high drug prices
“The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is urging pharmaceutical corporations to make improved drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) treatment affordable and available for hundreds of thousands of people around the world who desperately need it. MSF joined tuberculosis (TB) activists to disrupt the opening ceremony of the 50th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Hyderabad [Wednesday] as barriers to access to three new drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) drugs — bedaquiline, delamanid and, most recently, pretomanid — prevent the scale-up of treatment all over the world. While these drugs can offer people a better chance to be cured, only 20 percent of those living with DR-TB who need these newer drugs have been able to access them…” (10/30).