Imagine...
...being sick with TB and living in a place where health care is hard to come by. You have been feverish, losing weight and weakened by a cough that won’t go away. One day as you cough there is blood in your mouth. You are so weak you have to stop working. You cannot feed your family properly. You are very worried.
You live a long way from the nearest clinic, but finally you realize you must go. They tell you at the clinic they cannot take care of your illness - you will need to visit a different clinic.
At the second clinic you have to cough and cough to produce a sample. They tell you to come back in a few days for the results. In the meanwhile you worry - what is this disease?
You find out you have tuberculosis (TB), but they don’t tell you anything else (the doctor has no time to speak with you). Lucky for you the treatment is free, but you will have to visit the clinic every day to be given your medicine, and the treatment will last six months. You still cannot work, and now you have to pay to take the bus every day.
Some 25 thousand people become sick with TB every day, and a third of them never get the treatment they should. Every day more than four thousand people die because of TB; so many of them are voiceless, unrecognized.
Imagine...
...being the parent of a child with TB.
Probably your child is constantly tired and unable to play with friends as before. She cannot understand what is happening to her.
They tell you at the clinic that she needs a TB test. This is not a simple matter. There is not a simple, painless test for TB in children. A doctor needs to insert a tube down her throat and then inject liquid in order to get a sample to test. This is frightening and painful for your daughter and for you.
When the test comes back positive, you find out she will have to take four different medicines over six months.
You will soon find out the medicines don't come in the form of a syrup or chewable tablets. You will need to crush up the pills or encourage her to swallow them whole and find ways to help her to complete the treatment. It won't be easy, but you will have to do it. If all goes well she should be cured, but without proper treatment, TB often kills.
Imagine how you feel knowing that your child is going through this ordeal because she caught TB from you. The vast majority of children who become ill with TB have been infected by an adult.
Half million parents face this situation every year if they are fortunate enough to have access to diagnostic facilities and TB drugs for children. In many places children with TB have nowhere to go.
Imagine...
...a world in which everyone who is sick with TB gets proper diagnosis and treatment, and no one dies of TB. Zero TB deaths would be achievable if we were reaching everyone who needs treatment, and reaching them promptly. We could be doing that right now.
Imagine a world where most people received an effective vaccine. Suffering and death from TB would be at an end. Imagine how it would be to live in a world with no TB.
Join the Stop TB Partnership in imagining this and making it happen.
