A letter is written to the World Health Organization requesting gatifloxacin be included on the WHO Essential Medicines List
The shortened treatment regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), piloted in Bangladesh and used, with modifications, in Niger and Cameroon, was based on gatifloxacin and achieved treatment success in a very large proportion of patients. Gatifloxacin is likely to have played a critical role in this success.
Making gatifloxacin available is an urgent priority, to provide high-quality care to people affected by drug-resistant TB. At the present time, there are no quality-assured formulations of gatifloxacin available.
As such, The Union, the Institute of Tropical Medicine and the Damien Foundation wrote to Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director of the Global TB Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO), to express their interest in including gatifloxacin in the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML).