South Africa regulator gives MSF access to cheaper TB drug linezolid

After a three-year long struggle, humanitarian aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has received approval from the South African Medicines Control Council (MCC) to import a dramatically more affordable version of an antibiotic, linezolid, in order to expand access to the drug and provide better treatment options to patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) in Khayelitsha, Western Cape.

MSF has been using linezolid in individualised drug regimens to treat patients with DR-TB in Khayelitsha since 2011, by purchasing the drug at the private sector price of over 700 rand (~$65) per 600mg tablet. Linezolid, global pharma giant Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) Zyvox brand, is only one drug in an already expensive regimen for extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), and the cost of the drug during up to two years of treatment can exceed 520,000 rand (~$49,000) per patient.

“The high price of the brand name product was consuming up to 10% of the entire annual budget for MSF’s HIV and TB project operations in Khayelitsha, which limited the number of patients to whom we could offer linezolid,” says MSF’s TB doctor, Jennifer Hughes.