UNITAID Announces $30 Million in Funding to Reduce Cost of TB Test
UNITAID Announces $30 Million in Funding to Reduce Cost of TB Test
UNITAID, an international facility founded in 2006 to purchase drugs against HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, has announced $30 million in public-private funding to significantly reduce the cost of Xpert MTB/RIF, a new diagnostic test for tuberculosis manufactured by molecular diagnostics company Cepheid.
The funds from UNITAID, the government of the United States, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will reduce the price of diagnostic cartridges from $17 to less than $10. The price reduction will allow for an accelerated rollout of the test and will apply to more than a hundred and forty-five purchasers in about twenty low- and middle-income countries, including those with a high burden of multi-drug resistant TB and co-infection of HIV and TB.
The drug will be rolled out under the leadership of WHO and the Stop TB Partnership, which will also administer the UNITAID grant. Stop TB's TB REACH initiative, which is supported by the Canadian government, will provide up to $10 million for the effort.
The Xpert assay represents a major advance in terms of the diagnosis of tuberculosis, as it provides dependable results in less than two hours directly from sputum samples — an approach that is much more reliable than microscopy, the method currently used in most laboratories. Xpert also detects resistance to rifampicin, one of the most commonly used drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis. The Xpert test will only contribute to a reduction of new cases if infected individuals receive appropriate treatment, however.
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