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 "I want to walk again, to work again. I want to get up in the
morning, get on a bus and head to the countryside," Campos said from
his bed beneath a sheet-draped window in the shantytown Carabayllo,
one of the poorest districts in Peru's capital, Lima.
A clothes vendor before falling ill, Campos is one of at least
30,000 Peruvians infected with tuberculosis, an ancient disease that
killed 1.8 million globally last year - more than AIDS-related and
malaria deaths combined.
Campos is also part of a low-budget pilot program that aims to
eradicate tuberculosis from the poorest corners of the world, where
it continues to thrive despite being curable.
In places like Villa Esperanza, or Village of Hope, a neighborhood
in Carabayllo where clusters of pastel-colored homes cling to dusty
hills, the problem is inadequate health services to help patients
follow through with treatment, which takes six months to a couple
years.
Partners in Health (PIH), a Boston-based non-profit that works with
Peru's health ministry, offers a simple solution. It trains
community volunteers to tend to tuberculosis patients in their
homes, making sure they take medicine daily and helping them
navigate the public health bureaucracy.
The volunteers, nearly all women already active in the community,
have proven better at finding people with tuberculosis than
white-coated health professionals, said Dr. Leonid Lecca, executive
director of PIH in Peru.
Guadalupe Quispe, 61, has treated some eight patients as a volunteer
in her neighborhood, where the stigma of tuberculosis can cost
people jobs and relationships.
The position does not pay, but Quispe said it has other rewards. She
pointed to a small house on a slanted street where she once
persuaded a young woman coughing up blood to get treatment. The
woman would have likely died otherwise.
"After she got better, she went to school. And now she's a nurse.
When I think of her, I feel happy," Quispe said.
So far, no tuberculosis patient in PIH's year-and-a-half-old program
has dropped out, a key challenge in slowing the spread of
drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis that result from unfinished
treatment, said Lecca.
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'I HAVE HOPE'
Peru is home to the highest rates of multi-drug resistant
tuberculosis in the Americas, but one in four patients in the Andean
country give up on treatment because the medicine needed to kill the
bacteria have such harrowing side effects, Lecca said.
"Some medicines change the color of your skin, some cause bouts of
psychosis," Lecca said. "Patients need to be accompanied through
this process."
Quispe visits Campos every day. She has helped bring a wheelchair
ramp to his home and is not shy about badgering him to eat properly.
"Mrs. Guadalupe's my right hand," Campos said, beaming at her,
teary-eyed, as she helped him sit up to test his strength ahead of
back surgery. The tuberculosis has eaten away part of Campos' spine.
"I used to cry constantly. The pain was so unbearable. I even
thought about killing myself. But thanks to Mrs. Guadalupe I have
hope to push through this," said Campos.
(Photos By Mariana Bazo, Text By Mitra Taj; Editing by Cynthia
Osterman)
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