New Initiative Expands Access to Life-Saving Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Treatment

Boston, MA –Today Partners In Health (PIH) and Unitaid launch a new initiative to improve care for people suffering from drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) in seven high-burden countries.

The Accelerating Regimens and Care for DR-TB (arcTB) project will strengthen diagnosis, prevention, and treatment in Belarus, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Pakistan, Peru, and South Africa.

With catalytic funding of $7.3 million from Unitaid—an organization long committed to advancing innovation in the fight against DR-TB—arcTB is led by PIH in collaboration with a consortium of leading global health partners. Médecins Sans Frontières, Interactive Research & Development, and Stellenbosch University are PIH’s consortium partners for the implementation of arcTB, delivering patient-centered care across the seven high-burden countries. Programmatic and diagnostic capacity will be enhanced through the technical expertise of Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, supporting the rollout of the latest WHO-recommended tools and strategies for DR-TB care.

arcTB is one of three complimentary projects sponsored by Unitaid to bring quality prevention, diagnosis, and treatment services closer to those most vulnerable to the disease. Specifically, the arcTB group joins the Kenya Legal and Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN) and the Stop TB Partnership to implement innovative community-led strategies to strengthen the DR-TB care cascade by improving case-finding and linkages to care, and supporting people with DR-TB to stay on treatment.

“arcTB builds on Unitaid’s commitment to expand timely access to novel testing and treatment for drug-resistant TB,” says Dr Philippe Duneton, executive director at Unitaid. “By focusing on patient-centered care and strengthening the care cascade—from diagnosis to treatment—this project will help ensure that lifesaving innovations for drug-resistant TB reach those who need them—particularly populations like pregnant women and children who are too commonly last to access them.”

Despite being preventable and curable, tuberculosis remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing 1.3 million people annually. Alarmingly, only one in four DR-TB patients are diagnosed and successfully treated.

“Too many patients are lost at every point along the care cascade—from recognizing symptoms to accessing testing to receiving the right treatment,” says Dr. Michael Rich, senior health and policy advisor at PIH. “arcTB is about breaking down those barriers—bringing testing closer to communities, simplifying treatment, and ensuring that care is not just available, but compassionate and complete. When countries get this right, TB can decline by more than 10 percent per year. That’s not just progress—that’s a path to elimination.”

Over the next three years, arcTB will improve case detection, connections to preventive and curative services, and the quality and availability of treatment, especially among children and pregnant women. In arcTB, every person diagnosed with active DR-TB will be offered the latest all-oral DR-TB treatments, which are shorter and less toxic than previous drug regimens but just as effective.

“By working directly with communities and focusing on the needs of patients, we are ensuring that the latest scientific advancements reach those who need them most,” says Dr. Paul Sonenthal, director of inpatient medicine and critical care at PIH. “This is good for patients, good for national TB programs, and good for the fight against TB.”  

arcTB builds on PIH’s legacy of innovative DR-TB care, from its cutting-edge care for DR-TB patients in Peru’s slums in the 1990s to its leadership in developing new and improved treatment regimens in the 2020s. arcTB marks the next step in PIH’s mission to ensure poor and marginalized people everywhere have access to the best TB care.