“I knew what tuberculosis is, but I didn´t know I had it… At the beginning I didn’t understand what my disease was. I was taking drugs hoping that it would go away, but it didn’t,” 21-year-old Mahina describes the beginning of her treatment. The medications didn’t work as she has multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) that does not respond to first-line drugs for TB.

“Then they changed my diagnosis to MDR-TB. I take five pills at 10 or 11 am and then three pills in the afternoon,” says Mahina. “Nowadays, everything is okay. I take my medication, sometimes I feel some side effects, but I have pills to suppress them.”