Tuberculosis in Afghanistan

Photography by: Riccardo Venturi

Presented by: World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern

Mediterranean 2007

Kabul 2007: a city in turmoil. People are dying from a totally preventable and curable disease, tuberculosis (TB), better known

to Afghanis as “sal”.

Dibos’s baby is suffering from malnutrition. He is coughing and sweating too. Dibos and her baby are at the TB clinic waiting to

see a doctor. Is it TB?

Vidorga is a 33 year-old woman who has been suffering from TB for 3 long years. Now, finally, she is at the Kabul hospital

receiving directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS). DOTS is the WHO-recommended strategy for the treatment of TB.

Those who suffer from TB, but whose names appear in a TB treatment sheet like this one, may be among the lucky ones who

escape death from TB.

Lakten is a grandmother who lives with her big family in a small house in Kabul. She and her two grandchildren are affected by TB.

Mariam, on the left, shown with her baby and her sister, is suffering from multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB). She is under

treatment. Will they too be infected?

Fayas is a 24 year-old man with MDR TB. Fayas is receiving second-line TB medicines under close medical supervision in the

TB ward at Kabul General Hospital.

Ramatulla is a bus ticket salesman. He also has MDR TB and is the only provider for his poor family. Will he recover soon from

the disease that is threatening his whole family?

Ismail, 9 years old, is in need of better nutrition. He is waiting with his mother in the food distribution line provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) at the TB Hospital in Kabul.

Joint efforts are being made by all to combat the disease: WHO, WFP, BRAC, Red Cross, USAID and others... Here, a doctor checks the X-ray of a TB suspect at the German TB Clinic in

Kabul.

People are responding to the efforts. With stigma declining, TB suspects are coming forward for sputum examination.

If laboratory results are positive for TB, the patient is immediately put under DOTS.

DOTS is a proven successful endeavour that is saving thousands of lives in Afghanistan and saves millions more around the world every

year.

Zakayeva is a woman who watched her mother die of TB years ago. Now, while pregnant, Zakayeva has been diagnosed with

TB. But she will not share her mother’s fate. Thanks to the efforts of the community, DOTS has reached her.

DOTS and good care will cure Zakayeva.But will everyone else in Afghanistan and other countries of the

Eastern Mediterranean Region and the world be so lucky? More needs to be done to stop TB

We need you to Stop TB

Stop TB World Health Organization

Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean

www.emro.who.int/stb

Email us at: stb@emro.who.int