[LAGOS] An expert says the early success of four states in Nigeria implementing a new, shorter TB treatment regimen lasting just six months could pave the way for its nationwide rollout.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 10 million people worldwide are infected with TB each year, with Nigeria and South Africa among eight countries with two-thirds of all cases. of tuberculosis.
Previous treatment lasting nine or 18 months was a challenge for patients and health systems to ensure its completion; which prompted the WHO and its partners to recommend a six-month treatment regimen last month.
“Our results so far show that the six-month regimen is cost-effective with mild side effects”
Victor Babawale, Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria
Nigeria is already using the six-month treatment in four states as part of an operational research program that started in November 2020.
“So far, our results reveal that the six-month regimen is cost-effective with mild side effects,” says Victor Babawale, deputy director of the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Program at the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria.
“It reduces drug resistance due to the short duration of treatment, and patients prefer it to other regimens because healing is faster,” he adds.
This six-month regimen uses either BPaLM (a combination of oral medications bédaquiline, pretomanid, linezolid et moxifloxacine) or BPaL (an oral combination of bédaquilinepretomanid et linezolid).“With this new guideline, almost all patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis can be treated within six months with an all-oral regimen,” Tereza Kasaeva, director of the Global Tuberculosis Program at WHO, said in announcing the news. recommendation last month.
“We now have more and much better treatment options for people with TB [résistante aux médicaments] through research that produced new evidence,” she continues.
Mel Spigelman, president and CEO of TB Alliance, says the new WHO guideline allows treatment for almost all forms of drug-resistant TB.
Manageable side effects
The latter confided to SciDev.Net that “WHO has just announced excellent news for patients. This is a testament to what can be accomplished through sustained, long-term investment in TB research and development. »
“We now have a way forward to treat the vast majority of drug-resistant TB cases with just six months of all-oral treatment, simplified treatment regimens that have manageable side effects, and cure rates on the same order of magnitude as treatment for drug-susceptible tuberculosis,” adds Mel Spigelman.
He explains that treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis could dominate a patient’s life and that just a few years ago, its treatment took more than three times longer than that of many early-stage cancers.
“With an overall treatment success rate of only 59%, it was unreliable and treating a patient for almost a year and a half is too long to tolerate aggressive drugs,” adds the person concerned.
Mel Spigelman says the new, shorter treatments recommended by WHO will impact the drug-resistant TB treatment budget and save money.
New WHO guidelines for the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis should be implemented by almost all countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Spigelman says.
He adds that nine countries in Africa, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria and South Africa, have made arrangements to procure the drugs directly from the manufacturers or from the program. Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility.
Victor Babawale reminds SciDev.Net the efforts made to ensure a national roll-out of the new treatment: “at the stakeholders’ meeting in June, we will finalize our decision on the national roll-out of BPaL. We will send our results to the WHO and await approval to release them nationally. “, he says.
The original version of this article was produced by the English language edition of SciDev.Net for Sub-Saharan Africa.
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