Lindo, a little girl living in the Kingdom of Swaziland, has had to endure daily injections of the MDR TB treatment drug for the past four months and will continue to do so for a further two to four months
She has a smile so sweet, your heart can’t help but connect on the warmest level with this little girl. From her sparkling disposition, on a casual encounter, you would never believe what she has been through in her short life span of six years.
One finds it hard to believe that there was a time when Lindokuhle Mamba never used to smile because she was in constant pain. Young as she is, she has come close to death in the hands of one of the deadliest diseases, tuberculosis (TB).
Not only does Lindokuhle have TB, but she suffers from multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB which, simply put, means she has a strain of the TB bacteria that is resistant to a number of treatment drugs. This makes the disease that much harder to treat. It is even more difficult for a young child to swallow four to seven tablets twice a day, for a long period of time.
Lindo, as she is affectionately known to her loving grandmother, mother and fellow MDR TB patients, has had to endure daily injections of the MDR TB treatment drug for the past four months and will, probably, continue to do so for a further two to four months. That will not be the end, though, because she will still have to continue taking many second line TB tablets for a total period of roughly 18 months to two years.
By the time Lindo was three years old, she had developed a constant cough and breathing problems. She looked so tiny and was so weak that she could not even walk, like other children her age. Lindo’s mother, who worked in a dairy farm just outside Nhlangano town in the Shiselweni Region of Swaziland, had taken her daughter to different private doctors and pharmacists, but nothing had helped, as she would appear to get better for a short while, before the throwing up and diarrhoea started all over again.
When Lindo and her mother visited Lindo’s grandmother, Thab’sile Macu, at Machobeni in Shiselweni, close to the border with South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province, the grandmother was very concerned about the child’s health.
“I asked my daughter to leave the child with me for a short while because my biggest concern was that, maybe, she was not being fed well,” explains Thab’sile. The short stay was to last much longer than that because Thab’sile soon realised that Lindo’s problem was much more serious than just malnutrition. She decided to take the little girl to Nhlangano Health Centre. After several tests and scans, Lindo was diagnosed with TB and started on treatment.
When her condition did not improve after a few months on TB treatment, further screening was conducted and Lindo was diagnosed with the much harder to treat MDR TB. This meant she would be on a long and difficult treatment.
Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF’s) TB nurse at the Nhlangano Health Centre, Joyce Sibanda, recalls, “I had to pray to God to help me because I didn’t know how I was going to bear the task of giving the painful injections to such a little child every single day.”
The saddest part about all this is that little Lindo did not get drug resistant TB because she had defaulted on previous TB treatment, but she was exposed to an adult with MDR TB. Unfortunately, the old man suspected of having infected the child, did not practise proper cough hygiene. As a result, he infected a child he was actually very fond of and would never intentionally harm.
“I believe more needs to be done to educate people about TB infection control in this country because many have died or suffered because people do not know what to do to protect others, like covering their mouths and noses when they cough or sneeze” says Lindo’s grandmother.
In the meantime, little Lindo has come to appreciate the fact that the injections are being administered to make her feel better. She does not even cry anymore, something that makes the nurses’ job that little bit easier.
With her grandmother’s nurturing love, Lindo is well on her way to recovery, as evidenced by her weight gain and ever sparkling personality. There is hope!