Myanmar: Two new drugs launched ahead of World TB Day
March 23, 2016 - Myanmar will have cause to celebrate World TB Day tomorrow, as health organisations start attacking some of the most difficult-to-cure forms of the disease with two new drugs.
Myanmar falls among 27 countries worldwide characterised as having the highest burden of tuberculosis cases. The curable bacterial infection kills about 1.5 million people per year globally, according to international health organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which also said Myanmar sees about 9000 new multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases annually.
MDR-TB, and a more extreme form, extremely drug-resistant TB, are very difficult to cure as they do not respond to front-line treatment, and require a cocktail of medicines administered for two years. The chance of a cure is only 50 percent, according to MSF.
The government’s National TB Program and MSF will begin administering two new drugs to about 20 people in Myanmar.
The new medicines, bedaquiline and delamanid, are the first permitted to be added into the TB treatment mix in more than five decades, and present an alternative for patients who have developed a resistance to other drugs or suffer from intense side effects, said MSF.
The drugs received conditional approval from the World Health Organization for use in combating MDR-TB in 2014.
“Although we need to be prepared that these drugs might come too late for some of our patients who have suffered from the disease for a long time already, there is increasing evidence showing the value of these new drugs in treating drug-resistant tuberculosis,” said MSF endTB implementor Dr Khin Nyein Nyein in a statement. “Adding bedaquiline and delamanid to our medical toolbox of potentially effective drugs allows us to create individualised regimes that offer DR-TB patients the best possible chance to survive.”
The endTB program aims to provide access to the two new drugs to 2600 MDR-TB patients in 16 countries by 2019.
MSF said in a press release that it would start by administering either delamanid or bedaquiline in Myanmar – backed by global health organisation UNITAID – to 10 DR-TB patients who are co-infected with HIV. The statement added that the Myanmar Ministry of Health is buying bedaquiline for a similar scheme. International advisers will be accessible for support.
Source: Myanmar Times
