MSF calls for price of TB drug delamanid be cut

International aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)  acknowledges the lower price offered to the government of South Africa for newer anti tuberculosis (TB) drug, delamanid, marketed under the trade name Deltyba, but calls for it to be significantly lower and expanded to all countries in need.

Mylan (Nasdaq: MYL), which licenses the drug from the patent-holder Otsuka (TYO: 4768), will charge $940 for a six-month treatment course ($157 per month) as of June 1, 2020 in South Africa. Delamanid is used in combination with other drugs to treat people with drug-resistant TB (DR-TB), including the hard to treat extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).

Delamanid is one of the most expensive drugs used to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), priced at $1,700 for a six-month treatment course ($283 a month) through the Global Drug Facility, a TB drug and diagnostic procurement mechanism operating out of a Unite Nations (UN) agency. It is just one of multiple drugs needed to treat the disease. Its high price is a key driver of the high overall cost of treating people with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and XDR-TB. A full 20-month treatment course for one person can cost $8,000 to $12,000 through GDF, depending upon the length of treatment and the other drugs that make up the treatment regimen.

According to MSF, the high price has had a chilling effect on treatment scale-up: although delamanid was conditionally approved by the European Medicines Agency in April 2014, as of the end of August 2019, only 2,902 people have ever been treated with delamanid according to the DR-TB Scale-Up Treatment Action Team of global TB experts, which receives updates from National TB Programmes and large treatment providers, such as MSF.