Community of global drug-resistant tuberculosis implementers announces the "SWIFT Response Project"
December 18, 2014, Cleveland, Ohio -- In response to recent reports showing both the high morbidity and mortality and high financial costs of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), a pioneering group of international DR-TB experts has created the SWIFT Response Project. SWIFT stands for Society Working on Implementation to Fight TB and the goal of the group is to rapidly develop implementation tools to ensure optimal use of new TB drugs so as to provide the best possible outcomes for patients and programs.
Another motivation for the founding of this group was a recent announcement by the Pharmaceutical Company Janssen and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that 30,000 doses of the newly approved TB drug bedaquiline will be made available to countries facing severe epidemics of DR-TB.
“This is a very exciting time in the treatment of DR-TB, where for the first time in almost 50 years, we have new drugs available to treat our patients,” notes Dr. Jennifer Furin, a global DR-TB expert and one of the co-founders of the SWIFT project. “These new drugs, however, are meaningless if we cannot quickly move them into the field and into the regimens of patients who need them most. One of our goals in the SWIFT Response Project is to rapidly develop state-of-the-art implementation tools so that countries and programs can begin successfully using bedaquiline as soon as possible.”
The tools will be based on broader guidance issued by the World Health Organization on the use of new drugs for the treatment of DR-TB. The members of the SWIFT Response project serve in a voluntary capacity and represent programs and projects that have successfully treated patients with bedaquiline and are renowned experts in the use of this and other new drugs.
“In the past, the global TB community has been slow to respond to opportunities and challenges in treating drug-resistant disease. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to join forces and rapidly respond to this public health crisis,” notes Furin.
There are more than half a million new cases of drug-resistant TB that occur each year, and a majority of people with this disease are never diagnosed or treated for the disease. Among those who are treatment, more than half of them will not be cured. This situation leads to ongoing transmission of DR-TB and unless rapid and concerted action is taken, it is estimated that by 2050 DR-TB will be one of the top causes of death globally, surpassing those caused by cancer.
For more information, please contact Dr. Jennifer Furin at [email protected]. More on the SWIFT Response Project can be found at http://www.swiftresponseproject.org
Source: SWIFT Response Project
