TB+

by Rosa Verhoeve

Tuberculosis, commonly referred to as TB, is often thought to be a "disease of the past”. But it has re-emerged as a global threat, with one third of the world’s population latently infected. Anyone can get TB, but the disease is strongly linked to poverty and malnutrition. Even if the medication exists in certain places, people have to get to the medication, or the medication has to get to them. Someone dies of TB in the world every 18 seconds.

Last year I documented the life of TB patients in a MSF field clinic in Pieri, a small village in an extremely remote rural area of South-Sudan, which can be reached by air only.

Amidst harsh living conditions, MSF provides basic health care, with in- and outpatient services, TB and kala azar treatment, antenatal care, a therapeutic feeding centre and a medical lab in Pieri. Among the patient’s list are people suffering from TB, malaria, meningitis, measles, cholera, leprosy, broken limbs, childbirth complications, snake bites and gun shots. A single doctor, two nurses, a midwife, a logistician and a project coordinator supervise the enormity of it all, together with local trained staff. Watching the MSF staff at work, I quickly understood that being able to improvise and keeping one's head cool at all times, is as important as possessing great medical skills.
Despite my huge respect for their work, the MSF staff gladly agreed ‘to step back’ a bit, so I could work from a different angle. I wanted to give a human face to the disease Tuberculosis.

While photographing at the clinic, I asked myself: “Who are these patients? How has TB affected their lives? How do they normally live if healthy?”. By making diptychs of “classical” portraits of the patients combined with images of their immediate surroundings, like daily village life, Nuer fellow tribesmen with their cattle, and the vast, empty plains they normally wander in, I created a more personal story about the TB patients in that utterly remote clinic in South-Sudan.

Rosa Verhoeve On behalf of Medicines Sans Frontiers