WASHINGTON, DC, October 17, 2024 — The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), global health activists, health care implementers, and civil society organizations in the Time for $5 coalition will be delivering a petition today to US corporation Danaher's global headquarters in Washington, DC to demand more affordable medical tests.
To make sure everyone has adequate access to testing and save more lives, Danaher, the company that owns Cepheid and its GeneXpert tests, must drop the price to $5 for all GeneXpert medical tests sold in low- and middle-income countries. The petition has been signed by 206,937 people from 194 countries.
Testing is essential as it’s the first step to diagnosing someone who is sick, getting them on the treatment they need, and preventing further spread of infectious diseases—especially in the places MSF works where health care services are often limited for those who fall ill. Danaher’s GeneXpert medical test is critical for diagnosing diseases at the "point of care," meaning close to where people live and are seeking medical care. Access to “point of care” testing is critical since laboratories are often scarce in lower-resource settings. The GeneXpert tests are used to diagnose people with diseases like drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), HIV, hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and Ebola.
“Danaher and Cepheid, it’s time for you to listen to the more than 200,000 people around the world demanding immediate access to affordable lifesaving medical tests for people in low- and middle-income countries,” said Mihir Mankad, director of global health advocacy and policy at MSF USA. “Our research shows that Danaher and Cepheid could charge $5 per test and still make a reasonable profit, so it’s inexcusable that they are still charging more than triple that price in even the poorest countries for most of the tests they produce.”
More timely diagnosis means more lives saved
MSF published research in 2019 estimating that each GeneXpert test produced by Cepheid could be sold at a profit for $5 at the sales volumes that Cepheid and Danaher reached long ago. In response to pressure mounted by the Time for $5 coalition and TB activists in September 2023, Danaher announced it would lower the price of the primary test used to diagnose TB from $10 to $8, which was an important first step. According to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, this price reduction is expected to result in annual savings of $32 million, enabling the purchase of an additional 3.6 million tests every year. This means that many more people with TB will receive timely diagnosis and treatment, and ultimately more lives will be saved.
However, Cepheid and Danaher intend to continue to charge between $15 and $20 for the same type of test used to diagnose extensively drug-resistant TB ($15), HIV ($15), hepatitis ($15), STIs ($16-$19) and Ebola ($20). These prices are 200 percent to 400 percent higher than the $5 it’s estimated to cost Cepheid and Danaher to make one test and still be able to sell it at a profit. This is especially egregious considering that Danaher and Cepheid benefitted from $252 million in public funding to help develop the product. MSF purchases more than $2 million worth of GeneXpert tests each year for use in its medical programs in approximately 70 countries.
People cannot wait any longer
In September 2023, Danaher committed to an annual third-party assessment of what it costs them to make GeneXpert tests—an important opportunity to demonstrate it was not heavily marking up its prices. However, over one year has passed since that promise, and no information has been made available by the corporation about how the audit will be conducted and who will be allowed to see the results.
“It’s been over a year since Danaher committed to coming clean about what it costs them to make the GeneXpert tests, but all we have so far is deafening silence from the corporation,” said Stijn Deborggraeve, diagnostics advisor for the MSF Access Campaign. “This silence comes even after we published recommendations for how Danaher can ensure the audit is rigorous and transparent. And now, the people who need these tests around the world cannot wait any longer: Danaher must immediately make public the information about its planned audit and ensure affordable access to lifesaving tests.”
MSF has sent an open letter asking Danaher and Cepheid to respond to the demands and concerns raised in the petition by October 25.
