A $60m project that brings two new drugs to the treatment of tuberculosis offers hope to Ethiopians with the multi-drug resistant form of the disease
When Endalkachew Fekadu contracted a strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis 12 years ago, it was still considered a death sentence by health professionals in Ethiopia.
Endalkachew was 16 at the time, and remembers being told the medication he’d received had failed to have any effect on the disease. “In my case, my TB was resistant to all five medications that were considered first-line drugs – the drugs that treat regular tuberculosis. It was so bad to hear. I was desperate for the next line of medications that could fix it, but at that time they weren’t available in Ethiopia – and even if you could get them it was so expensive, thousands of dollars. No one could afford it,” he recalls, sitting in his small office in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
I'd forget my name, I couldn't use my hands or legs. Sometimes it felt the treatment was worse than the disease
Continue reading...
No comments:
Post a Comment