Background
The medical test maker Cepheid, owned by US corporation Danaher, vastly overcharges low- and middle-income countries for their ‘GeneXpert’ tests used to diagnose diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis, Ebola and STIs. A Doctors Without Borders study shows that Cepheid and Danaher could be charging $5 for each of these medical tests and still make a profit, but instead, they charge up to triple and quadruple that price even in the world’s poorest countries.
Last September, after a lot of pressure from around 150 organizations, and thousands of activists online, Cepheid and Danaher reduced the price of the primary tuberculosis (TB) test by 20%. This is already helping save millions of dollars for governments and global health institutions buying TB tests for millions of people and will allow millions of additional tests to be purchased each year. -- BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH.
The corporations continue to charge low-and middle-income countries between $15 and $20 for the same type of test that can help diagnose multiple other diseases, including drug-resistant TB, HIV, and hepatitis. These prices are 200% to 400% higher than what it costs Cepheid and Danaher to make one test. Plus, they keep prices exorbitantly high for low- and middle-income countries, even though they are selling millions more tests year on year, which has brought costs down for them through economies of scale. And on top of that, they got more than $252 million in public funding, primarily from the US government, to help develop the test in the first place!
The high price of GeneXpert tests is the main barrier for countries and healthcare providers to expand medical testing and save more lives by getting people the treatment they need faster. The statistics are staggering: 60% of people with TB can’t access a World Health Organization-recommended TB test like GeneXpert, and half of infants exposed to HIV are not tested for HIV within the first 2 months of life, as is recommended by WHO.
Help us get Cepheid and Danaher to prioritise people’s lives over their exorbitant profits. In 2023 alone, Danaher made almost $24 BILLION in revenue, and CEO Rainer Blair attributed their “better-than-expected" revenue directly to Cepheid’s sales. More affordable GeneXpert tests will help reduce needless suffering and unnecessary loss of life. Why wait any longer to lower the price?
Now is the time for Cepheid and Danaher to drop the price of GeneXpert tests to $5 each for all diseases and save many more lives in low- and middle-income countries!