NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

When Indian street-food seller Kumar Pal first began treatment for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis two years ago, he quickly spiraled into depression and gave up hope of living.

Weighing just 35 kg (77 lbs), shunned by his relatives and friends and in extreme pain due to the side effects of a cocktail of medicines, 40-year-old Pal spent weeks in bed.

“I stopped taking the medicines. I was certain that I was going to die anyway. I worried about how my wife would manage with four children,” said Pal, sitting in his two-roomed home in the maze of lanes in Sunder Nagari slum in northeast Delhi.

“The health visitors gave me support … they used to tell me to take my medicines, do exercise, eat properly. It gave me hope for the future,” said Pal, who now weighs 55 kg and has recently been cleared of the disease.

Pal is one of hundreds of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) patients at St. Stephen’s Hospital in Delhi who have been cured, aided by a unique program providing psychosocial support to sufferers of one of the world’s most deadly diseases.

Despite a lot of progress over the past two decades, the bacterial lung disease TB, that is spread through coughs and sneezes, infected nine million people and killed 1.5 million in 2013, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).