Skip to main content
An MSF staff holding separate sets of the tuberculosis treatment medicine inside the Makeni Regional Hospital in Bombali District, Sierra Leone. The left hand contains pills from the BPaLM 6-month shorter regimen treatment and the right hand contains pills from the 18 months longer regimen treatment.  

MSF started rolling out the new BPaLM treatment in Bombali District, Sierra Leone, in November 2022, making this shorter treatment routinely available for patients diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB).

Access to medicines

An MSF staff member holds separate sets of tuberculosis treatment medicines inside the Makeni Regional hospital in Bombali district, Sierra Leone, December 2023.
© Ammar Obeidat/MSF
Ebola disease in DRC: find out how we're responding
Learn more
Unaffordable, unavailable, not adapted - people around the world face these challenges in accessing lifesaving medicines.

During the 1990s, MSF teams made a bitter observation: we were failing to treat some of our patients suffering from infectious diseases, while in developed countries, remarkable progress was being made in the field of health. Two decades on, medicines in developing countries are still either too expensive, aren't suitable to be used in many of the contexts in which we work (for example, in hot, humid conditions or where there's a lack of electricity), or simply don't exist for the diseases we need to treat.

In 1999, we launched the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, now known as the Access Campaign. Its mission focuses on three areas: overcoming barriers to access to essential medicines, stimulating research and development for neglected diseases, promoting health exceptions to global trade agreements.

In 2003, MSF joined several research institutes, including the Institut Pasteur, to create the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), a non-profit research and development organisation engaged in research and development of new treatments for neglected diseases.

Access to medicines

Language
English