What are the health needs and challenges?

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, claiming 1.6 million lives every year. Approximately 95 percent of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Growing resistance to the most commonly-used TB medicines is compounding this challenge. In fact, there are more than half a million cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) every year, and DR-TB now accounts for nearly one-third of all deaths directly attributable to antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Activities and how they address needs and challenges

In late 2012, Johnson & Johnson introduced its medicine for the treatment of pulmonary multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) – and the first novel TB medicine to be approved in more than 40 years.

Since 2014, Johnson & Johnson has worked with the Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility (GDF) to deliver our MDR-TB medicine to those in need, including through a four-year donation program from 2015-2019 in collaboration with USAID and JSC Pharmstandard. Today, our medicine is available to more than 135 low- and middle-income countries procuring through the GDF, a model which was recognized by the Access to Medicine Foundation in 2021 as a “best practice.”