In August 2017, I was honoured to help launch a partnership between Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Private Limited and the Institute for Microbial Technology (IMTECH), based in Chandigarh, India to advance the potential of Indian science and help accelerate the discovery of innovative new treatments for tuberculosis (TB).

Under the Memorandum of Understanding, scientists from J&J’s Global Public Health team will work closely with scientists in India to explore potentially more effective, safer, all-oral treatment regimens to tackle multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), as well as new molecular entities to treat all TB patients.

This partnership builds on nearly 20 years of TB research and development by J&J and underlines our commitment to partnering with Indian organizations – and working with some of India’s finest scientific minds – to tackle this age-old killer.  

TB is an infection that has ravaged communities for generations. Although TB mortality fell 47% between 1990 and 2015, it still claimed more than a million lives in the latter year.

Despite multiple intervention, prevention and treatment efforts in the 135 years since German physician Robert Koch discovered the cause of TB, the disease remains a major global health problem. 

In 2015 alone, there were approximately 10.4 million new cases and TB killed an estimated 1.8 million people worldwide, including approximately 480,000 in my country, India, making this deadly disease one of the global top 10 killers.

To further add to the global burden, around half a million of those diagnosed in 2015 have MDR-TB. For these people, treatment options are limited as the disease renders commonly-used TB medicines, such as Isoniazid and Rifampicin, ineffective.

As with many diseases, however, we know that we can best tackle the challenges we face through partnership, and we share our partners’ determination to end TB.

At J&J, we are committed to working with governments, NGOs and other private sector organizations to tackle the scourge of TB. In India, in addition to currently providing our MDR-TB treatment free-of-charge to the Government’s Conditional Access Program, J&J is supporting a targeted program to increase TB diagnosis in Mumbai, training on TB management for healthcare professionals across various states and raising disease awareness in Hyderabad, Patna and Nagpur.

Collaborations such as the one between J&J and IMTECH are a sign of the premium we place on discovering new treatments that can play a role in beating the disease.

When partners bring their skills and expertise, we can ensure that more patients benefit from effective diagnosis, treatment and care, and make massive steps forward not just in India but across the broader Asia-Pacific region and indeed the world.

Aligned with the WHO’s End TB Strategy, which calls for a 95% reduction in TB deaths and an 90% reduction in the TB incidence rate by 2035, we are privileged to be able to contribute to global efforts to end the epidemic.

I sincerely believe that the partnership between J&J and IMTECH can take us a step closer to stamping out TB and I am proud to be part of the global groundswell to eradicate one of the greatest disease burdens of our time.