© AP Photo/David Longstreath
This Oct. 5, 2009 photo shows tuberculosis and HIV patient Vancherleum Maharathanaing, 33, looking out from the isolation ward at Wat Prabat Nampu, in Lopburi, Thailand. Simple TB is simple to treat, a $10 course of medication, but the pills must be taken in specific combinations for six months to completely wipe out the bacteria. If treatment is stopped short, the TB learns to fight back against the drugs, mutating into a tougher strain for which few, if any, medications exist. It can cost $100,000 a year or more to cure drug-resistant TB, which is described as multi-drug-resistant (MDR), extremely drug-resistant (XDR) and completely drug-resistant (CDR).
It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away.
Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood.
I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad."
It was really bad, and not just for him.
Doctors say Juarez's incessant hack was a sign of what they have both dreaded and expected for years - this country's first case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. The Associated Press learned of his case, which until now has not been made public, as part of a six-month look at the soaring global challenge of drug resistance.
