India accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s tuberculosis patients, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) with more than 1,300 deaths a day from an infection that’s long been preventable and treatable.
Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen India is looking to the younger generation to “be the change” and help reverse those staggering statistics with assistance from a famous Bollywood actress and an Indian hip-hop star.
The drugmaker has introduced a rap music video for its #BeTheChangeForTB campaign, enlisting actress Vaani Kapoor and rapper Kaam Bhaari, both youth icons in India, to deliver a message it hopes will resonate with people in their teens and 20s.
Besides leveraging the younger generation’s voice and reach through technology and social media to drive changes, the music video also aims to reach an age group that has been most vulnerable to TB, Sarthak Ranade, Janssen India’s managing director, said in an email.
There were an estimated 1.9 million new active cases of TB in India in 2021, and, as the campaign points out, nearly a third of those impacted by the disease are youth. Young people are also less likely to seek care, often due to lack of awareness or stigma attached to the disease, Ranade said, so many cases go undiagnosed. The campaign aims to normalize conversations about the disease, which typically infects the lungs and is the world's No. 2 infectious disease killer behind COVID-19.
“To help eliminate this disease from our country, we must bring the disease out of the shadows and meaningfully invest in youth as champions of change,” Ranade added.
The campaign, which Janssen describes as a “digital-first, precision-marketing led initiative,” has been running in eight cities in India since it launched in late March.
Along with the music video, it includes pages on Facebook and Instagram along with a website where young people can find resources about TB and sign up to be a “TB Changemaker.”
The company is collaborating with the Indian government and the United States Agency for International Development on efforts to make India TB-free by 2025. It is part of J&J’s broader 10-year TB initiative launched in 2018 aimed at ending the global TB epidemic by 2030.
J&J is also supporting youth-focused initiatives in other high TB burden countries including China, the Philippines and South Africa.
Johnson & Johnson’s Sirturo (bedaquiline), which won FDA approval in 2012 as the first new TB drug in decades, is recognized by the WHO as a core component of multidrug-resistant TB treatment.