Letters

To encourage more equitable access to new and repurposed TB drugs, TAG signed on to letters of support for the inclusion of rifapentine, bedaquiline, delamanid, and linezolid on the WHO's Model List of Essential Medicines. The 20th Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines will review drug applications and public comments in April 2015.

TAG and the TB CAB signed on to open letters to several manufacturers of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved generic linezolid, including Pfizer, Teva, Glenmark, Alkem, Amneal, Macleods, Apotex, Hetero, and Sanofi urging the companies to register their respective linezolid products with the Medicines Control Council (MCC) in South Africa. Registration of additional linezolid products will address the existing effective market monopoly and extremely high prices that prevent linezolid from being offered to all patients who could benefit from its use in South Africa and countries like Swaziland that rely on the South African regulatory approval system. The co-signatories asked that following registration, companies provide linezolid at the price currently offered to country programs through the Global Drug Facility (GDF).

TAG and other U.S.-based NGOs and civil society groups sent several appeals to legislators to prioritize tuberculosis (TB) in plans for fiscal year 2017 in line with the White House’s recently released National Action Plan for Combating Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis. Letters to three key House and Senate subcommittees—the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, the Defense Subcommittee, and the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.