InternationalMédecins sans Frontières France treats patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis
Published: Friday December 12, 2008
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Yerevan - MSF France has been working in Armenia since the earthquake 20 years ago. Since 2004, it has focused exclusively on tuberculosis.
"We started our program in 2004 with a pilot project," head of mission Christian Ferrier said in an interview. "This project had two components - an institutional component to organize a good system, a decentralized system to improve the quality of the diagnosis and the detection of TB patients, all the TB patients, but we were focusing on the treatment of the MDR-TB patients.
"The Ministry of Health and the authorities were not able to treat TB patients at the beginning of the program. Therefore we treated regular TB patients. From 2005, the Ministry of Health received support from the Global Fund and they also received support from the ICRC and German bilateral cooperation. From 2005, the authorities have had the means to treat regular TB patients. So from this point on we focused only on MDR TB patients," he said.
Today, MSF France is treating 170 MDR TB patients in Armenia. Mr. Ferrier said 7.7 percent of their patients have been diagnosed with XDR TB.
MSF relies on volunteers, who typically go on missions lasting an average of six months. Mr. Ferrier said the organization does not take money from governments; it welcomes private contributions, however.
