Lilly to invest further $50M to fight MDR-TB

US drug major Eli Lilly plans to invest an additional $50.0 million in a global partnership to fight Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership is an international alliance of 14 public and private organizations, including businesses, humanitarian organizations, academic institutions and professional health care associations.

This new commitment furthers Lilly's support of a pioneering initiative started in 2003, and brings its total investment to $120.0 million. The funding supports a multi-pronged strategy to increase the supply and availability of effective drugs for treating this life-threatening disease; training for front-line health care personnel; and efforts to focus global resources on prevention, diagnosis and treatment of MDR-TB.

Highly contagious, difficult-to-treat and a growing threat to global public health, MDR-TB strikes about 450,000 people each year, with the highest rates of prevalence in China, India, South Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The World Health Organization estimates that the average MDR-TB patient infects up to 20 other people in his or her lifetime and cases of MDR-TB have been found in virtually every country surveyed by the WHO. When drugs used to treat MDR-TB are misused or mismanaged, the more virulent extreme drug resistant TB can develop.