Kerema province, in Papua New Guinea, is one of three “hot zones” where tuberculosis is on the rise. The rate of infection here is nearly three times the national average, and multiple drug resistant TB, or MDR-TB, and even extreme drug-resistant TB, is prevalent, and without treatment the patient will not survive. The high rate of TB is in part due to patients stopping the treatment before it is completed. Patients with MDR-TB have to undergo a grueling, two-year treatment program which include daily injections and swallowing between 10 to 15 large pills in the morning. Young kids, like Elisa, pictured, find the treatment extremely difficult. On this day, it took Elisa’s mother and an MSF nurse 20 minutes to prod her into swallowing the pills. Then came the injection.
Image and text by Benedict Moran on assignment in Kerema, Papua New Guinea, 2015, via Instagram.
