Child-Friendly Bedaquiline Now Available from Stop TB Partnership's GDF Pediatric DR-TB Initiative

On June 11, 2020, the Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility (GDF) announced that child-friendly bedaquiline 20 mg tablets are now available from the GDF Pediatric DR-TB Initiative. Recently, the US FDA approved this regimen in children who are older than 5 years of age and weighing more than 15 kilograms. Rather than injection-based medicines, this is an oral regimen, meaning children will now benefit from the same optimized treatments being provided to adults.

When procured via GDF, a six-month treatment course of child-friendly bedaquiline costs USD 200 for children 5-12 years of age, bringing the total cost of a 5-drug, 12-month DR-TB regimen to about USD 1,175. This addition of pediatric bedaquiline brings the total number of child-friendly DR-TB medicines supplied by the GDF to nine.

Dr. Luccica Ditiu, Executive Director of the Stop TB Partnership, urged the global TB community to have a “renewed focus to find, diagnose, and treat all the children with DR-TB” now that “TB suppliers and GDF have brought forward optimized formulations and a mechanism to accelerate the uptake of child-friendly formulations by National TB Programs.”