Tackling TB: Expand access to and improve affordability of diagnostics and treatment
Statement by the Treatment Action Campaign, SECTION27, Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam.
On 12 June 2012, The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), SECTION27, Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam hosted a meeting prior to the launch of the 3rd SA TB Conference. The meeting brought together TB clinicians, counsellors, patients, activists and academics. Speakers and participants drew attention to the many challenges and failures of the country’s response to TB and DR TB, but also highlighted important opportunities to begin to reduce new cases and reduce mortality.
TB is the number one cause of mortality in South Africa. Expanding diagnosis of and access to treatment for TB and DR TB is crucial to reducing mortality – these services must no longer be limited to certain areas and facilities. Additionally, facilities and patients must have access to better diagnostic tools and medicines, as well as improved access to existing diagnostic tools and medicines.
The group called for 5 crucial interventions to reduce TB cases and mortality:
1. Diagnose all people living with TB and DR TB
2. Ensure
access to the best available medicines and regimens
3.
Improve affordability of medicines
4. Decentralise DR TB
care
5. Reduce crowding in prisons and implement active
case finding and infection control measures
Reducing TB deaths and cases: What needs to be done?
1. Diagnose all people living with TB and DR TB
Far too few people living with TB and DR TB are diagnosed.
Active case finding coupled with better diagnostics is needed to
identify new TB cases. The Gene Xpert is now being used in 25
sites in South Africa. By March 2012, 311,117 samples were
processed.
The use of the Gene Xpert will
improve detection of TB and DR TB in South Africa. It is able to
detect TB in many patients that currently test falsely negative
using smear microscopy as well as detect rifampicin resistance.
Resistance to rifampicin is highly correlated with resistance to
isoniazid in South Africa and therefore with Multi-Drug
Resistant (MDR) TB.
While we welcome the use of
the Gene Xpert, civil society must continue to build pressure on
Cepheid to reduce the cost of machines and cartridges. This will
allow expanded use of Gene Xpert diagnostics in South Africa and
other developing countries. Furthermore, ongoing research into
TB diagnostics is needed. We still need cheap, laboratory free,
point-of-care diagnostics for TB.
2. Ensure access to the best available medicines and
regimens
In 2008, the treatment success rate for
patients with DR TB was only 48%. Patients in whom DR-TB
treatment is failing must be able to access new, promising
medicines. Linezolid offers hope for patients failing on DR TB
but is not widely available. Additionally, new medicines that
have shown promising results in phase II trials, but have not
yet been through phase III trials, such as bedaquiline and
delaminid, can provide a potential chance of cure for select
patients that have no other treatment options.
Access
to bedaquiline is already available in a number of countries
under compassionate use, but remains unavailable to patients in
need in South Africa. The Department of Health and Medicines
Control Council must facilitate access to important new
medicines in the pipeline for patients in need of these
medicines. Finally, once medicines in the pipeline receive
pre-approval or approval from the Food Drug Administration, they
must be fast-tracked by the Medicine Control Council for
registration.
While patients must be provided
with the best currently available medicines, there is still a
huge need for new, better medicines. DR TB medicines are
extremely difficult for patients, because they involve many
pills and/or injections and cause side effects such as hearing
loss, paranoia, depression and kidney failure. Additionally, TB
regimens take six months to complete and DR TB regimens can take
up to 2 years. Funding for research into new medicines, to
shorten and simplify regimens and reduce side effects, is
critically needed.
3. Improve affordability of medicines
While the Department of Health successfully
brought down the prices of a number of TB medicines during the
previous tender, South Africa continues to pay higher prices for
many medicines than what is available internationally.
Linezolid, for instance, is unaffordable and should be available
at lower costs. Pfizer charges R8,460 per patient per month for
use of linezolid in the public sector and more than double this
for NGOs, such as MSF. South Africa should pursue strategies to
further reduce prices. Strategies could include importing lower
cost medicines from overseas or pooling procurement with other
high burden countries.
The funders and
developers of new medicines in the pipeline must ensure that,
once these medicines are registered, they are made widely
available at low costs.
4. Decentralise DR-TB care
Nearly half of patients diagnosed with DR TB
in South Africa are not initiated onto treatment. With only
2,500 beds for DR TB patients, centralised care is no longer
possible. Furthermore, it is not feasible for many potential
patients because it requires them to travel long distances to
access care. Pilot sites for decentralised DR TB care are
showing far better treatment outcomes. Nationally, the treatment
success rate for DR TB treatment was only 48% in 2008.
Decentralised care in a pilot project in KZN, has improved cure
rates to 66.7%. In Tugela Ferry, active case finding,
decentralised care and infection control has decreased the rate
of new MDR TB infections by half over the last six years.
The
Department of Health has now developed a policy framework for
decentralised care of TB and begun to provide decentralized care
in some sites. Costing of decentralised care has shown that it
will reduce the costs of the programme by reducing the number of
patients who stay in specialised hospitals as well as the length
of time patients stay.
Decentralised care
should be rolled out nationally. To do this, nurses must be
trained to manage treatment and community health care workers
must be trained to support care.
5. Reduce crowding in prisons and implement active case
finding and infection control measures
South African prisoners are facing a crisis
of TB, but there is little political will to address the
epidemic. Researchers from the University of Cape Town and
Stellenbosch showed a 90% probability of TB transmission per
patient per year in a large South African prison. The main
driver of these high transmission rates is overcrowding of
prisons. Prisoners are commonly held is mass cells in extremely
close proximity for up to 23 hours per day. Proper
implementation of regulations regarding national cell occupancy
would reduce transmission by 30%. Implementation of
international cell occupancy regulations, coupled with active
case finding, ventilation, and reduced time in cells would
reduce transmission by 94%.
The Department of
Correctional Services and Department of Health must address the
crises of TB in South African prisons by implementing measures,
including reducing crowding, to reduce transmission. Further,
prisoners that are TB positive must be diagnosed earlier and
receive proper treatment to reduce mortality.
Treatment Action Campaign
