South Africa: Profile - I View the Doctor-Patient Relationship As Sacred, Says Leading TB Doctor

22 March 2022

By Biénne Huisman

Dr Jennifer Furin has fought drug-resistant tuberculosis since 1995, when she worked as a student in a poverty-stricken suburb in Lima, Peru. Since then she has roamed the world, treating TB and HIV patients in under-resourced countries, including Haiti, Russia, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, eSwatini, Lesotho, and South Africa.

In treating drug-resistant forms of TB, she has been at the forefront of advocacy efforts to replace hearing loss-causing injections (for example, kanamycin) with a new and better drug called bedaquiline that is taken in pill form. Speaking to Spotlight this month, she lauded South Africa as a "global beacon of hope" for mostly eliminating the use of such injections. "Those horrible, horrible injections," she says.

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