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Nanyanyiso Baloi holds her treatment regimen for pre-XDR-TB, which includes delamanid and bedaquiline. Khayelitsha, Western Cape.

Nonyanyiso Baloi, a 32-year-old mother of three lives with her children and aunt in Khayelitsha,  Western Cape, South Africa.

After reacting very badly to first-line TB treatment, doctors desperately searched for alternative treatment options, before discovering her full diagnosis of pre-XDR-TB, which required a whole new treatment regimen. 

There’s a critical need for clinicians to have newer, improved drugs to treat extensively drug resistant strains of TB.

Current treatment regimen: bedaquiline, delamanid, linezolid, clofazimine, levofloxacin, ethambutol, terizidone 
Nonyanyiso Baloi: 

“I’ve lived in this house since 1989, and how live here with my aunt and three children, ages 8, 6 and 4 years. I’m a full-time mum.

Earlier this year, I lost weight, had no appetite and was vomiting a lot. I was always tired. I was diagnosed and have been on this journey since.
 
I’m happy I got this treatment, because I couldn’t even walk back then – but if I see myself now, I’m doing everything I couldn’t do before.”
Anyanyiso holds her treatment regimen for pre-XDR-TB, which includes delamanid and bedaquiline, Khayelitsha, Western Cape, South Africa. October 2016.
© Sydelle WIllow Smith

Treating drug resistant TB in the Western Cape

Anyanyiso holds her treatment regimen for pre-XDR-TB, which includes delamanid and bedaquiline, Khayelitsha, Western Cape, South Africa. October 2016.
© Sydelle WIllow Smith
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South Africa has one of the highest burdens of Tuberculosis (TB) and (Drug Resistant) DR-TB in the world, with around 20,000 people diagnosed with DR-TB in 2015. Some of the country’s highest rates of DR-TB exist in Khayelitsha in the Western Cape. Médecins Sans Frontierès (MSF) runs a strengthened regimen programme in the informal township, which incorporates new drugs into treatment regimens for DR-TB patients, including the drugs delamanid and bedaquiline.