For more than 20 years, the Khayelitsha project in South Africa’s Western Cape province has been an incubator of innovative responses to HIV and drug-resistant TB, always putting the needs of patients at the heart of what they do.

In 2018, the project started a post-exposure program for children and adolescents who have been exposed to DR-TB within their households, and from 2020, with COVID-19 keeping people indoors this included the offer of preventive therapy to all high-risk household contacts who were exposed to DR-TB in the home.

We were able to enrol more than 120 household contacts in just over 12 months, and learned many important lessons that are today influencing global policy with regards to TB prevention.