Skip to main content

Meet the first MSF patient to have recovered from XDR-TB

War in Gaza:: find out how we're responding
Learn more

XDR-TB stands for extensive drug resistant tuberculosis. Drugs for TB have not been improved in four decades; they cause terrible side effects and require the patient to take numerous pills every day for between six months and three years. While one in five patients under treatment for moderately resistant strains of the disease do not survive, patients with extensively resistant cases, if they can get treatment at all, usually must rely on less effective and more toxic medicines, with lower success rates.  For these reasons and others, Xoliswa Armans is a remarkable patient.