Opinion: Ending tuberculosis will take lower drug prices and a new, improved innovation ecosystem

The United Nations “high-level meeting” on tuberculosis will take place in less than a month and the political declaration that emerges from it will, for better or worse, shape the global response to the world’s deadliest infectious disease for years, perhaps decades, to come. There is a very real risk that the declaration could undermine, rather than improve, access to medicines for the more than 10 million people who fall ill with tuberculosis every year. To prevent this from happening, we must distinguish disagreements that are honest from those that are dishonest.

The content of the political declaration was supposed to have been agreed upon a few months ago, but that didn’t happen. Here’s why: The United States government and pharmaceutical companies are to strip language from the declaration that reminds countries they can use international legal mechanisms to lower the prices of tuberculosis drugs to make them accessible to all people who need them. But countries from the global South with high burdens