Pro Pharmaceuticals Group supports Global Drug Facility collaboration to expand access to TB medicines in Australia
The Stop TB Partnership has publicly recognised Pro Pharmaceuticals Group (ProPG) as a partner in its Global Drug Facility (GDF) collaboration to expand access to essential TB medicines in Australia. In an announcement on LinkedIn, the Stop TB Partnership confirmed that a recent delivery of medicines for drug-sensitive tuberculosis (TB) — including formulations for both adults and children — has now reached Australia through this collaboration.
"Supporting Australia to expand access to essential TB medicines for people affected by TB through our Stop TB Partnership's Global Drug Facility (GDF) collaboration and partnership with Pro Pharmaceuticals Group, Sandip Manku. A recent delivery of medicines for drug-sensitive TB, including formulations for both adults and children, has now reached communities in need. We are proud to contribute to a global response that helps ensure quality-assured TB treatment reaches the people and communities who need it, where they are." — Stop TB Partnership, LinkedIn
About the Global Drug Facility
The Global Drug Facility is the Stop TB Partnership's procurement and supply mechanism, set up to expand global access to quality-assured, affordable TB medicines and diagnostics. It is recognised as the world's largest public-sector provider of quality-assured TB treatment, combining strategic procurement, market coordination and technical assistance for national TB programmes across many countries. In practice, this means the GDF works with governments, health systems and, where appropriate, local supply partners to move quality-assured TB medicines from source through to national and local distribution.
Adult and paediatric formulations, together
The inclusion of both adult and paediatric formulations in this delivery is a meaningful detail. Children with TB need medicines designed and dosed for them, not adult tablets divided down — a distinction that shapes how global TB programmes plan their supply, and one the GDF addresses directly through its work on access to paediatric TB formulations.
Pro Pharmaceuticals Group's role
The Stop TB Partnership described this as its ‘GDF collaboration and partnership with Pro Pharmaceuticals Group.’ Programmes of this kind typically depend on two capabilities working together: a global mechanism capable of procuring quality-assured TB medicines at scale, and effective local execution within the destination country's regulatory and healthcare supply environment.
ProPG's core work is sourcing and supplying unlicensed and hard-to-access medicines to Australian hospitals and healthcare providers, including through the TGA's Special Access Scheme and Section 19A pathways, and supporting continuity of supply during medicine shortages. This collaboration sits within that broader capability: connecting an international medicine-access mechanism with the regulatory knowledge and supply infrastructure needed to bring quality-assured medicines into the Australian healthcare system.
Why this matters
Tuberculosis remains one of the world's leading infectious causes of death, and reliable access to quality-assured, correctly formulated medicines — for adults and children alike — is central to treatment success and to preventing drug resistance. Global procurement capability on its own is not enough: international medicine-access programmes also depend on local partners who understand a country's regulatory pathways, import requirements and healthcare supply chain, so that medicines procured internationally actually reach the patients and health systems that need them. This collaboration is one example of that principle in practice — a global mechanism and a local, regulatory-literate partner working together to complete the same supply chain.
This is the space Pro Pharmaceuticals Group operates in more broadly. Beyond this collaboration, ProPG works with Australian hospitals and health systems to access medicines that are difficult to obtain through conventional channels — whether because of a shortage, because a product is not registered for supply in Australia, or because a health system needs a specific medicine sourced and delivered through a compliant regulatory pathway. Readers interested in how these access pathways work in practice can also see our related article, Beyond Sourcing: Supporting the Complete Pharmaceutical Access and Supply Pathway in Australia.
