Armenia

A mobile MSF TB surgery mission has successfully completed surgery on six DR-TB patients in Yeravan, Armenia.

As TB cases in Armenia rise at an alarming pace, MSF is stepping up "patient-centered" treatment of the deadly disease.

Along with medical staff, social workers and psychologists are an integral part of the MSF TB team in Armenia

Having been through it himself, a former TB patient now does what he can to ensure as many patients as possible complete their treatment regimen

Since 2004, MSF has been working in Armenia, a country with one of the highest per capita rates of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in the world.

For many patients in the joint MSF and Ministry of Health program in Armenia, MDR-TB treatment is often a complex issue. Treatment takes up to 24 months, and the patient needs to be admitted to hospital for the first several months for close clinical supervision. Following discharge, they have to continue daily medication for another 18 to 21 months via ambulatory or home-based care. This long and constraining treatment leaves many patients with the dilemma of whether or not to quit work and leave home for several months.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Ministry of Health opened Armenia's first and only treatment program for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the capital city Yerevan in September 2005, and the first MSF patient, N.L., has just completed treatment lasting almost two years.