Programme costs of longer and shorter tuberculosis drug regimens and drug import: a modelling study for Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan

The introduction of new and often shorter tuberculosis (TB) drug regimens affects the cost of TB programmes. We modelled drug purchase and import costs for 20-month, 9-month and 4- to 6-month TB drug regimens based on 2016-2020 treatment numbers from a TB programme in Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, and 2021 Global Drug Facility prices. On average, 2225±374 (±sd) people per year started TB treatment, 30±2.1% of whom were diagnosed with drug-resistant forms of TB. Transitioning from a 6-month to a 4-month drug-susceptible (DS)-TB drug regimen increased the TB programme's annual DS-TB drug cost from USD 65±10 K to USD 357±56 K (p