Register for MSF webcast - Medical frontlines: New approaches to drug-resistant tuberculosis
September 24 at 8 PM EDT
Join Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and New York Times science writer Denise Grady for an online panel discussion on the global crisis of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB). The panel, comprised of health care workers and patient advocates working to improve treatment for people living with DR-TB, featuring Dr. Grania Brigden, TB advisor MSF Access Campaign, Cathy Hewison, TB Medical Advisor at MSF, Mark Harrington, executive director of the Treatment Action Group, and Evaline Kibuchi, Senior TB advocacy Manager, at the Kenya AIDS NGO Consortium (KANCO).
More than 600,000 people are currently living with multi-drug resistant forms of TB. Despite the clear need to combat this public health crisis, existing treatment for DR- TB includes toxic, decades-old medicines with brutal side effects. Treatment lasts an agonizing two years, where patients experience everything from nausea and depression, to deafness and psychosis. Still, after enduring all these side effects, treatment is only effective for half of patients. Today, two new medicines are on the horizon, offering hope for the first time in decades that new treatment is possible, and former and current patients are being increasingly vocal about their need to access better, more tolerable medicines. Join us to hear what MSF is doing to address this emergency, and how patients and health care practitioners on the front-lines are advocating for a new approach.
