World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP has been helping tuberculosis patients in Tajikistan overcome the deadly disease since 2003. In partnership with the Global Fund and the NGO Project Hope, WFP supplies food rations every two months to tuberculosis (TB) patients who are undergoing the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) treatment, as well as to their families. The food gives the patients, whose bodies become thin and ravaged by the disease, the physical resilience to absorb the powerful anti-TB drugs and, even more important, the motivation to adhere to the treatment for the full six months. Patients who drop out before completing the six month course risk developing Multi-Drug Resistant TB, which is harder and far more expensive to cure. The photos here show various facets of TB treatment in the northern Sughd region of Tajikistan.   
 

Abduhakim Nabiva, 13, has 45 days left to go in his DOTS treatment. When he is cured, his mother, Malohat, hopes to raise enough money from friends and relatives to take him to Russia or Uzbekistan for treatment for his mental disability. Malohat does not know how her first child contracted TB; his diagnosis, the result of a medical test after chronic illness and sore throats, came as a shock.

Abdusami Sattorov is collecting his second ration of WFP food, which he says helped him gain 8 kg after he entered the TB centre as an in-patient. Now, released from the hospital, he is faithfully taking the daily medicaton despite saying it looks "like kerosene" and tastes terrible. The 34-year-old former bill collector for the state gas company spent a year working in Russia but was sent home when he was given a positive diagnosis in a mandatory medical test.

Yusupov Normuhammad is the director of the TB Centre for the district of Jabbor Rasulov in the Sughd regiona. He has seen a tragic pattern of Tajik migrant labourers coming home after they develop TB in the sub-standard living condictions in Russia or Kazakhstan. Although they know they have TB, they are afraid to tell their families. "He keeps it a secret because his wife will divorce him," Yusupov says of a typical patient. But when their family members fall ill, the secret is out and the men make their way to the TB Centre for a cure.

Medical staff at the TB clinic in Jabor Rasulov district check the hot soup that TB patients will eat for dinner, along with fresh-baked bread using WFP wheat flour. The in-patients begin gaining weight with the three nutritious meals a day, but they are warned not to let that prevent them from continuing to take the powerful drug regimen that has a more than 95% cure rate.

The flat, unleavened bread the hospital gives TB patients is characteristic of Central Asian cooking. The bread is made from enriched wheat flour and fortified vegetable oil.

Like many public buildings from the Soviet era, the district TB clinic of Jabor Rasulov has distinctive artwork to raise the spirit of the people.
 

Mohammad Abdurazzotkod, right, has completed 30 days as an in-patient. Trained as a medical orderly, he was in military service when he got the symptoms of TB. He is serving out the last two months of his service with his hospital time. He has already gained 8 kg from the healthy diet he gets and will take the medicine every day for the next five months. Dr. Bakhtiyor Ruziev, left, monitors his progress