TB survivors speak out for better care
Join Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) for a virtual conversation with Phumeza Tisile, a tuberculosis survivor and advocacy officer for TB Proof, and Stephen Anguva Shikoli, national coordinator of the Network of TB Champions. In this live discussion, you’ll learn about their experiences surviving TB, which is still the world’s deadliest infectious disease despite the fact that it is curable.
Phumeza lost her hearing as a side effect of the older regimen of drugs often used to treat multidrug-resistant TB. She has worked in partnership with MSF for years to take on Johnson & Johnson and other pharmaceutical corporations blocking people’s access to newer and safer treatments, and was recently profiled as one of the TIME100 Next leaders in global health. Phumeza and Stephen are both extraordinary leaders in advocating for access to lifesaving TB treatments and diagnostic tests for everyone, no matter who they are or where they live.
We’re hosting this conversation with Phumeza and Stephen in the run-up to the United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB on September 22. MSF and other organizations are demanding that US corporations Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Cepheid pledge to take action ahead of this landmark meeting to expand access to the lifesaving TB drug bedaquiline and GeneXpert tests, respectively.
MSF is one of the largest nongovernmental providers of TB treatment worldwide, and we also advocate for better care for people living with TB. Shailly Gupta, communications advisor for MSF’s Access Campaign, will moderate the discussion, and Dr. Stijn Deborggraeve, diagnostics advisor for infectious diseases for the MSF Access Campaign, will be available to answer your questions.