How can access to treatment change a life?
Yuri was losing hope that he would ever beat tuberculosis.
He had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). It’s a form of the disease that can’t be cured with standard medicines, and sometimes not even with the most powerful medicines we use against TB.
But after two gruelling years of treatment, he still wasn’t getting better.
Yuri’s doctors said he had one chance left: a treatment programme offered by MSF in cooperation with Belarus’ government, using the latest TB drugs. He enrolled right away.
“I started to improve immediately,” he said. “The tests, the X-rays – everyone was surprised!”
Yuri was fortunate. For many others, this kind of testing and treatment isn’t available.
Today, he’s free of TB. And we’re working to bring everyone access to the same level of care.
Three things to know about TB
How MSF is responding to TB
Key publication
Take a closer look
What MSF staff are saying
Photograph by Sydelle WIllow Smith
“If I am diagnosed with drug-resistant TB I would have access to bedaquiline, delamanid, linezolid - all these drugs - as easily as I want because I can afford to pay for it. But a person in Khayelitsha wouldn’t have it as easy, and that is unfair.”
Dr Jennifer Hughes, writing from South Africa.
How is it possible...
...that we sent people to the moon almost 50 years ago, yet millions of people with tuberculosis are still treated with old, inadequate medicines?