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Tuberculosis treatments yield promising results in the Chechen Republic

MSF has run a tuberculosis (TB) treatment programme in Chechnya, Russian Federation, since 2004. The crucial moment in the programme’s history came when bedaquiline and delamanid, the first new TB drugs to be developed in nearly 50 years, became available. In 2014, MSF managed to bring these drugs to the project and start patients with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) on new treatment regimens.
Since then, 156 patients in the TB programme in Chechnya have been put on treatment regimens containing bedaquiline, delamanid or a combination of both. Most of them had been left with no other treatment options and probably would not have survived. MSF is so far seeing patients with very promising outcomes. In 2015, we spoke to some XDR TB patients who were starting new regimens in the beginning of their treatment, and now, we have returned to see how much their lives and treatment outcomes have changed in that time. We are releasing three of these patients’ stories together with portraits of the patients from 2015 and 2017 by Lana Abramova. The two newer drugs have been available since last five years and represent a potential lifeline for people affected with the most resistant forms of TB. Yet, globally less than 5% of those people in need have actually received them by the end of 2016. Moscow is set to host WHO global Health Minister-level meeting on TB this month where MSF will be calling out on governments to step up and increase access to TB diagnosis and treatment including newer TB treatments.

MSFSTO16526

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