BANGKOK, Thailand — Filipino tuberculosis (TB) specialist Rugaiya Calapis once asked her patient, a 32-year-old man using the alias “Juan,” to undergo a sputum test after he complained of coughing and losing weight for two weeks.
The following week, Calapis found that her patient—who had taken an unpaid day off for his check-up—was positive for tuberculosis. This prompted a second round of testing for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which is closely linked to TB.
However, according to Calapis, Juan never returned to the doctor’s office.
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“That means his TB is not treated, the train of transmission continues, and the system’s whole reply is that this is the procedure. But is it? This procedure has a name. It is called inequity. It is inefficiency,” she said.FEATURED STORIES
