Why is this report significant? In 2011, the South African Department of Health (DoH) introduced a national policy of 'decentralised DR-TB care, which diagnoses and treats DR-TB patients in primary health clinics, instead of hospitalizing them for up to six months.

To date however, 4 years after the decentralised policy was released, only 70 of the 2,500 anticipated decentralized sites have been set up, leaving many thousands of potential DR-TB cases left undiagnosed and treated.

Using vital lessons learned from the Khayelitsha project (now fully handed over to the Western Cape Department of Health), the Western Cape has fully adopted a decentralised DR-TB model as policy.

However, many other provinces continue to lag behind. With only 42% of over 14,000 DR-TB cases started on treatment, MSF is encouraging the government to speed up the roll out of decentralisation, as well as ensure that newer DR-TB drugs are made more widely available within a well-supported setting.