India To Roll Out World’s First Child Friendly TB Drugs

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Seven years after the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved guidelines to treat tuberculosis in children, India will become the largest country globally to roll out the world’s first easily-dissolvable and flavoured TB drugs. The child-friendly tablets, which are a combination of two or more medicines in a fixed dose combination (FDC), had been recently introduced through the government’s TB control programme in six states, and will now be launched privately and through government centres in the remaining states this year. According to WHO, one million children contract TB every year, while it kills over 400 daily, across the globe. The child-friendly treatment could, therefore, prove to be a game-changer in simplifying and improving therapy. India has around 75,000 paediatric TB cases, and 17 lakh adult TB patients as per government estimates. “India will be the first country in the world to offer the largest number of kid-friendly FDCs, by the end of the year,” said Dr Sunil Khaparde, DDG, ministry of health and family welfare, and head, central TB division. “Improved diagnostics will also be made available through 1,300-odd GeneXpert machines, which will ensure one machine per 10 lakh population,” he added. Although curable, TB treatment consists of multiple drugs taken for a minimum of six months. When treating children, it is difficult to approximate the correct dose by manually combining several drugs together. Splitting the pills results in a bitter taste as well as imprecise dosage. Experts say most companies don’t launch improved medication due to absence of “commercial” opportunity and “low margins”. “We have supplied paediatric drugs for 2 lakh children in 36 countries since December 2015. In 2017, a roll out will happen in both the public and private space, and about 15,000 children will be treated from those supplies,” said Vijay Agarwal, business development director of Macleods Pharmaceuticals. “Timely diagnosis is the weakest link in India. In the public sector, TB remains undetected because doctors rely on old techniques like sputum smears, while empirical antibiotic therapies and non-specific tests like x-rays in the private sector don’t help,” said Madhukar Pai, associate director, McGill International TB Centre, Canada.

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