Otsuka’s
FighTBack Strategy:
Responsible Access
to Medicines

Drug resistance emerges when tuberculosis (TB) treatment is not managed properly, including when medicines are not correctly prescribed, when they are of poor quality, or when treatment is not completed.¹

Most of the currently used anti-TB medicines are decades old, and strains that are resistant to at least one of them have been reported in every country surveyed by the World Health Organization.¹ 

In 2019, an estimated 484,000 people acquired rifampicin-resistant TB (RR-TB), and of these, 78% had multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), a type of TB resistant to rifampicin and isoniazid.² New treatment options for such patients are urgently needed. At the same time, we need to ensure that TB drugs remain effective for as long as possible.

Otsuka is balancing the needs for access and antimicrobial stewardship through collaboration with established organisations who share Otsuka’s priority of fighting and preventing drug resistance, education on the responsible use of the medicine developed by Otsuka, and working with centres experienced in MDR-TB treatment and care.

Otsuka takes rigorous steps to curb resistance to antibiotics. Our stewardship achievements are recognised in the Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark survey of the Access to Medicine Foundation.⁴

The company is one of the signatories of the Industry Declaration on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance, available here³, which reiterates commitments to continuing the fight against drug resistance through innovative solutions meeting public health needs and improving access to high-quality antibiotics.