So why wasn’t Henry on bedaquiline? Although most of the money that went into developing bedaquiline came from the public (much of it from the U.S. government), the drug was owned and patented by Johnson & Johnson, which had a monopoly and therefore absolute control over the price. A course of bedaquiline can be produced profitably for $130,[*5] but during their monopoly Johnson & Johnson charged much more than that for a course of bedaquiline, making the drug far out of reach for the Sierra Leonean Ministry of Health. As a result, bedaquiline wasn’t available to Henry, so he received the
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