"There's a competing product (one I shall not name here!) with a similar (price, performance) product but with the 'celebrity factor' in Bill Gates and WHO and whoever is Hollywood-world-health-ambassador-starlet-of-the-day."
That is simply not correct on a number of counts.
1. The only other IGRA diagnostic for TB is the T-Spot from Oxford Immunotech. It certainly does not have a similar price to QFT (it's around 3 times as costly).
2. To the best of my knowledge, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has no direct involvement with either QFT or T-Spot.
If you are talking about some other TB diagnostic then it is very likely that you are talking about a diagnostic for Active TB. That is something totally different than the QFT which is a test for Latent TB.
CST Price at posting:
$2.41 Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held