A video interview with Kenyan Sellah Moraa the returning Project Coordinator from the Manzini project in Swaziland. Over the past ten years, Laboratory Technician Sellah has been on five missions with MSF. After a short break, she has recently started her next assignment with MSF working as a PC in Myanmar.

Here, she talks about how MSF goes ‘above and beyond’ to ensure patients with TB in Swaziland receive world class treatment, and why, despite not being a conflict zone, Swaziland is enduring its own medical emergency.

With 9.4 million new cases and 1.7 million deaths each year, tuberculosis (TB) is one of the developing world’s biggest killers; and 85 percent of cases occur in Asia and Africa.
Swaziland has one of the highest rates of TB and Multi-Drug resistant (MDR-TB) TB worldwide while 80% of people in Swaziland who contract TB are HIV positive.
To overcome this, MSF in Swaziland is using shorter TB treatment regimens (9 months instead of the usual 2 years), and for eligible patients, the newest drugs for the hardest to treat symptoms. These new drugs: Bedaquiline and Delaminid, are the first new tuberculosis drugs in almost 50 years. Along with being more effective, they have less side effects (with no risk of full or partial deafness). While the new drugs show promising results, access to new TB drugs worldwide is limited. In October 2016, it was estimated that, globally, only 5,738 patients have been able to access Bedaquiline, and 405 patients have had access to Delamanid.