What are the health needs and challenges? 

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the world’s deadliest infectious disease, claiming 1.5 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.

For the last decade, Johnson & Johnson has been working with partners to make its MDR-TB medicine available, affordable and accessible to patients in need around the world. As of March 2023, nearly 600,000 courses of the medicine have been delivered to 158 countries, including the 30 highest-burden countries for TB, which together represent 95 percent of the global DR-TB disease burden.

• Medical Education: Johnson & Johnson is ensuring appropriate clinical use of our MDR-TB medicine through medical education activities and the dissemination of relevant resources to physicians who request information about our products. 
• Safety Monitoring and Management: A rigorous pharmacovigilance framework (referred to as active TB drug safety monitoring and management, or a DSM) is in place to track, document and analyze safety data related to our products, including our MDR-TB medicine, that we receive from around the world.  
• Antibiotic Resistance Testing and Surveillance: Johnson & Johnson supports efforts in high-burden countries to help improve diagnostic capacity, including drug sensitivity testing, to ensure that patients are put on well-designed drug regimens to maximize their chances of treatment success and protect against the development of resistance to anti-TB drugs. Further, we proactively monitor for emerging resistance by participating in antibiotic resistance surveillance programs in collaboration with WHO-recognized reference laboratories and the AMR Register with Vivli. 
• Supply Continuity: As part of our 10-year initiative to help end TB, we are continuing to ensure supply security and stability of our MDR-TB medicine by facilitating global access, including through the Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility, where it is available to more than 135 low- and middle-income countries.