Summary

Peru had established its TB program only four years back in 1991, but only after years of inadequately financed and unsupervised treatment. So Farmer and Jaime know that there are probably many more cases of MDR-TB than just those first ten. They know from such men as Michael Iseman at National Jewish Hospital in Denver that the disease is hard to treat anywhere and is exorbitantly expensive. Furthermore, the side effects are just as daunting, and so each patient will need to be given not only drugs and careful monitoring, but also encouragement, food, new roofs, and water pipes. Jim reasons that what they have in their favor is that TB is airborne, and therefore, everyone is at risk just because they breathe. This means that any campaign that may be instituted will get the eyes and ears of the world, even the rich. Paul agrees, but is determined to start with the first ten patients first.

They begin treating patients in August 1996, transporting the program they used in Haiti to Peru. They already have an indigenous team of Peruvian health workers, and they also bring in a brilliant epidemiologist named Meche Bercerra and two female medical students from Harvard. They exchange e-mail daily, and Farmer sends orders in great detail and devises drug regimens for every patient, inventing tricks for the most resistant cases.

They have some problems at first, including the health workers balking at entering the homes of the patients, but they resolve that just as they take on the problem of the Peruvian government. The Peruvians fought long and hard to obtain funding from.......

Notes

This chapter furthers the idea of Farmer taking his radical ideas beyond Haiti. Now he is fighting for the seriously ill MDR-TB patients and.......

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