“Most of our patients come from the slums of Mumbai,” says Thomas Albuquerque, MSF’s infection control officer. “Space in Bombay is a very difficult thing and accommodation rates are very high, so people try to manage with whatever they can get. Most of them have extended families so there are too many people living in one room. The living conditions are very inhuman in most cases. They are so poor that sometimes they don’t even have two square meals a day. When they are under treatment they are very weak. And then on top of that there is the medication, and the pressure of how their neighbours will react if they come to know their status. The patients we see have very tough lives.”