“I know first-hand the importance of patient-friendly TB treatment”
by MedAccess
19 October 2021 | Insight
Evans Mburu, our implementation executive, knows first-hand TB’s devastating impact. When Evans was a student at Jomo Kenyatta University, he contracted TB.
After a few weeks of treatment he felt better but a few months later he fell ill again, this time with potentially life-threatening TB symptoms.
Watch Evans share his story in the video below.
Tuberculosis claimed the lives of an estimated 1.5 million people in 2020. It is the second leading cause of death from an infectious disease after COVID-19, and before AIDS-related illness. Millions more people suffer life-changing effects as severe damage to their lungs leaves them unable to lead an active, healthy life.
Treating latent TB
An estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide live with latent TB, usually without symptoms. However, approximately 5-10% of people will go on to develop active TB, which requires urgent medical attention. Increasing access to treatment for latent TB can avert the development of active TB.
Historically, treatment for active TB has often involved taking hundreds of pills over up to three years. The pills often have unpleasant side-effects, contributing to relatively low treatment completion rates for TB. These low rates leave people at risk of reinfection and have also led to a worrying rise in multidrug-resistant and extensively-drug resistant TB. This is why treating latent TB before it becomes active is so important.
Our volume guarantee for TB treatment, 3HP
In August, we announced a volume guarantee for Macleods Pharmaceutical to improve availability of the company’s patient-friendly three-month latent TB treatment, known as 3HP.
The guarantee joins a package of measures from the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Unitaid and the IMPAACT4TB partnership, which is led by the Aurum Institute.
MedAccess is a social finance company, wholly owned by the UK’s CDC Group. Its work is funded by UK aid through the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
