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Wubshet Tolossa

I was first diagnosed with tuberculosis, while being a medical Intern at Jimma University Specialized Hospital, Ethiopia. I started treatment as soon as I was diagnosed. However, things were not getting any better despite being on treatment. Waking up without sweat-soaked pyjamas and bed sheets became unthinkable. Being hundreds of kilometres away from home, also made things much worse. But somehow, I made it through this and today I am a proud TB survivor.
Something felt weird about that day from the moment I woke up. I was not sure what it was till it hit me that I don’t have pills to take today. I couldn’t believe it had been four years since a day passed without anti-tuberculosis tablets. I left home feeling I’d forgotten something really important. I tried to go through the past four years in my mind while the taxi was driving me to work. I felt that I really had to thank each and every one that helped me get through those dreadful four years and started texting. I never thought the replies would make me so emotional. I burst into tears.
Those were tears of joy, gratefulness and feeling alive. The “happy for you” replies kept on coming and made my tears fade away into a smile. I thought of my patients who have gone through times much worse than mine and thought if this was almighty’s plan to make me a better physician. I was so thankful in many ways. I was thankful that I was given a chance to say “TB tried to stop me but hasn’t slowed me down a bit”.
When I was first diagnosed with tuberculosis, I was a medical Intern at Jimma University Specialized Hospital, Ethiopia. As a medical intern our main concerns were getting our job done, caring for our patients and acquiring all the skills from our teachers to become good physicians. We literally were selfless. Skipped meals, sleepless duty nights, thirty-six hours of work with no rest were not strange to us. Self-protection materials like gloves and masks were a luxury. I believe this experience is similar in most of the third world countries’ medical schools. Needle pricks, blood splashes, getting soaked in amniotic fluid were our daily stories. I was one of these selfless ones. I can’t remember putting a mask on to examine a coughing patient & nobody warned me about not doing that.
I was diagnosed with TB by chest x-ray halfway through internship year. I started treatment as soon as I was diagnosed. For all I knew, tuberculosis was easy to treat once diagnosed. Little did I know getting treated was not as easy as it seemed. I was not sure if I was unlucky or something, but things were not getting any better despite treatment. I had repeated visits to internists and pulmonologists, tried different additional antibiotics and even steroids, but was still coughing. Climbing stairs was a struggle. Waking up without sweat-soaked pyjamas and bed sheets became unthinkable.
Being hundreds of kilometres away from home made thing much worse. Despite my tuberculosis not improving, I managed to do my thesis, complete the internship and graduate in the top three from my class. I left campus with a doctorate in medicine and TB in my lung. I still don’t know where I got the strength to do that. I am 100% not a loser. I was the luckiest unlucky intern on campus. I had amazing mates who were selfless and supported my struggle in every way with no discrimination.
I came back home. Home is Addis Ababa, the capital city. I started working as a general practitioner and at the same time continued looking for a cure for my lungs. I took re-treatment for nine months with two months of injections. Things seemed a little better just to get worse again at the end of the treatment. In the meantime, I didn’t stop visiting the famous senior physicians and pulmonologists in the country.
One of them even told me that the illness has eaten me up so bad, it is impossible for me to recover. I panicked. I felt helpless. Drug resistant tuberculosis was what I had. But it needed confirmation. When I went to collect my sputum culture and sensitivity results after three months of longing for them, the response I got was “what samples?”.
I went to St Peters hospital here in Addis with little hope left in me. There MDR TB was diagnosed and I started my treatment at home. I took injections with an average of twenty tablets daily for nine months, then tablets only for a total of two years. After two weeks of treatment, I woke up from bed with dry bed sheets. The drugs were miraculously helping me recover, but coping with the side effects was no piece of cake. It was tough with lots of ups and downs. Luckily for me, the worst side effects didn’t happen. My improvement was significant and I had to suck it up and continue fighting. And I won.
I was declared cured on October 2013. It was quite a roller coaster ride. Even after treatment, TB has left its scars in my lungs. Going through TB was tough, but so was I. They say “challenges are not sent to destroy you; they are sent to promote, increase and strengthen you.” And I say “challenges are sent to completely change you for the better.” My challenge was tuberculosis. Passing through it, I’ve grown to be a better physician, though I still feel the pain whenever I see a patient with TB. I don’t want to see anyone going through the rough patches I went through. I wish our future generations live in TB free world. It should just stop. We need to end TB today.
There were lots of things that helped me get through those times and there are plenty that I feel could’ve been better. I had great friends and family who supported me in every way. But I guess that’s not the case for every TB patient. I remember I was desperate and wanted to talk to someone who is going through similar hardships. There was none. There were times I felt lonely while I was not alone.

I wish there were TB treatment support groups. I wish diagnosis was much easier and treatment was much shorter with much less pills. I know we have better drugs now which are, unfortunately, are not fully accessible to the most deserving ones. If these things were there, I believe my struggle would’ve been much easier. I see struggling TB patients every day and I think of many ways to help them. But clearly TB is not a one-man struggle. We all should play our part and get rid of it for good. It just has to stop. (Credit Médecins Sans Frontières)

Other Members

Bart Willems

In 2012, I swam four and a half laps of the Long Street pool in Cape Town entirely under water. When I surfaced, I covered a distance of 114 m and have broken the South African freediving record. This win was made extra special by the fact that I recovered from TB five years earlier.

Andrea von Delft

As a physiotherapist, I knew about TB, but not enough. I was generally thinking, “it’s out there.” It wasn’t until my husband, a medical doctor, was diagnosed with TB, that I realise that anyone can get TB and that health workers are particular at risk of contracting TB.

Dalene von Delft

I was diagnosed with MDR-TB on Christmas Eve of 2010. What followed was a harrowing 19 months of treatment, during which I had to make some potentially life-threatening decisions in an attempt to preserve my hearing and career. I had optimal access to all forms of care, but the vast majority of other patients are not nearly as lucky. I became a very motivated TB patient/physician advocate, campaigning for more effective, safer and equitable treatment options on local and global platforms.

Phumeza Tisile

I am a 30-year-old (2020) and live in Cape Town. In 2010, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was forced to stop my studies at Cape Peninsula University of Technology to go for treatment. Despite this my condition did not improve, and after about five months of treatment, first for “normal” TB and then for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), I was finally diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), the deadliest form of the disease