AIDS2018: Reduction in price of bedaquiline welcome, but is it enough?

This week the price of bedaquiline in the public sector in South Africa was cut in half. What does this mean for the increased uptake of this critically important TB drug across the world?

This week at the International AIDS Conference South Africa’s Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi announced that the South African government had negotiated a much-reduced price for the multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) drug bedaquiline.

Bedaquiline is something of a break-through drug being one of only two new TB drugs approved in the last half-a-century. The South African government recently announced that bedaquiline will replace kanamycin injections in the country’s standard treatment for MDR-TB. This decision has been widely welcomed given the serious side-effects, such as irreversible hearing-loss, related to the painful injections. It is expected that the World Health Organization and other high-TB-burden countries will follow South Africa’s lead.

The new price announced by Minister Motsoaledi is $400 (around R5400) for a six-month treatment course. This is down from a price of $750 according to Motsoaledi. The figure quoted to Spotlight by the Department of Health last month was $820. Either way, the South African government has managed to negotiate a price drop of around 50%. For this they deserve credit.

More good news is that the new price will also be available to countries purchasing bedaquiline through the Global Drug Facility and to countries that benefited from the soon-to-end bedaquiline donation programme. It is now up to these countries to update their MDR-TB treatment guidelines and to ensure that all people who can benefit from the drug has access to it. So far, uptake of bedaquiline outside of South Africa has been depressingly poor and many people are still being exposed to hearing-loss causing injections of doubtful efficacy.

And yet, even the $400 price is far from ideal. Researchers from the University of Liverpool have estimated that bedaquline could be produced and sold at a profit for under $100. The researchers did however assume much larger volumes than current demand – so that price might not be realistic right away. It is with this in mind that activists recently demanded that bedaquiline should be priced no higher than $200 for a six-month course. Whether this demand played a role in the price-cut is not known.

For some perspective, a year’s supply of first line antiretrovirals costs the South African government about $100. Six months of drug susceptible TB treatment (a full course) costs less than $30. It should also be kept in mind that bedaquiline is just one of multiple drugs used for MDR-TB and the entire MDR-TB drug regimen will thus cost much more than $400.

It seems likely that for bedaquline to become available to all people who need it across the world the price will have to be dropped further. Then said, this week’s price-cuts is a firm step in the right direction. It is now up to countries to start scaling up use of this drug and over time to negotiate further price cuts.

Low is both an editor of Spotlight and a member of the Global TB Community Advisory Board, one of the organisations that demanded a reduction in the price of bedaquiline. The views expressed in this article are his own.