A CRS staffer looks at TB medication with Sister Carmelita Martines, a Carmelite nun who cares for tuberculosis patients in a rest house outside of Dili, East Timor. Photo by Laura Sheahen / CRS

“When I first arrived here, I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t eat.” Maria Sabina Tai, a 40-year-old mother of 7 living in East Timor, sits in the yard of a treatment center for people with tuberculosis. Maria had felt sick for two years, but wasn’t sure what the sickness was. “Then a TB volunteer found me,” she says. She went to the center mainly because of her children: “I was worried about my kids.”

The volunteer who found Maria is part of a CRS-supported program run by Klibur Domin, a local organization in this small, impoverished country near Australia. Though East Timor’s population is only one million, over 470 people die from TB each year here; many more are infected. Klibur Domin runs the 50-bed treatment home, where patients stay and receive a course of antibiotics and good food. Klibur Domin also seeks out sick people in their villages, and raises awareness of the disease.

Tuberculosis festers and spreads easily “where people are crowded together in a small space, and where there is poor ventilation,” says CRS’ Michelle Lang-Alli, who is Asia Regional Technical Advisor for Health. Malnourishment and overwork add to the problem.
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Linking TB and HIV Testing

Because of the high risk of opportunistic infections among HIV patients, the AIDSRelief consortium, led by Catholic Relief Services, makes sure that patients in high prevalence countries are cross tested for TB and HIV. In Haiti, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda, extended TB services include prevention methods, screening, food provisions, and, in some cases, treatment.
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Tuesday, March 24, is World Tuberculosis Day.

Catholic Relief Services is providing tuberculosis treatment and care in eight countries, including the Philippines province of Maguindanao. The Maguindanao Province is one of the poorest provinces in the Southeast Asian country. The life expectancy is age 53, with tuberculosis as one of the leading causes of death. Throughout the province’s 28 communities, our health experts and local partners have devised a system that, in addition to upgrading health facilities, has drafted members of the community to fight the disease.
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