BD drops prices for MGIT reagents

As a collaborator in the development of new culture-based assays for MDR-TB the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics has a lot of leverage in negotiating pricing- particularly in high-burden countries.  Currently, FIND had such agreements in place with three manufacturing partners averaging approximately 50% discounts on instrumentation and 75% on reagents.  It seems that today BD has reached the next milestone in cutting reagent costs in high-burden countries- the sale of 3.5 million tests. Granted, these systems are still extremely costly; the FIND discounted BD Bactec culture systems still retail for $38,950 with per-test reagent kit costs at $2.05, but dropping prices can only but increase access to testing.

The dropping reagent costs are promising, but the high cost of instrumentation is still something that’s remained constant across the board when it comes to diagnostic instrumentation. What can we do to get these tools to the people who need them?