Posted on 11 April, 2013
Illustration: This is in Bandra again, in a slum. This is a drug-resistant TB patient with HIV as well. He was happy to have us there and let us draw him and talk to him, and the stigma wasn’t an issue for him. This is really a description of the outside of the house where he lives with his mum and his other brother. She’s raised six children here; he sleeps outside as a sort of precaution, she sleeps inside, and this is his bed which is covered up by bits of plastic bags and propped up by pillars and corrugated iron. It gives you an idea of the sort of places that [MSF’s patients] are living in, and living in when they’ve got this horrible disease. India 2013 © George Butler
MSF’s HIV/TB Project in Mumbai
MSF invited illustrator George Butler to visit our HIV and MDR-TB project in Mumbai, India to capture our activities there. He returned with images and stories of families affected by multidrug-resistant TB, their care givers, and the MSF team responsible for their treatment.
When I sat on the bed across from Hissen, I just looked at him. His serious little face was angry. I fished out my mobile phone and offered it him. He took it carefully with his right hand and held onto it. I kept on giving him more things out of my pockets and he kept taking them only with his right hand. He would not use his left arm at all. After enough temporary gifts, Hissen agreed to shake my hand. Every move I made, he studied me as carefully as I was studying him.
Inspecting his left arm, we could see there was a swelling above his elbow. As gently as I could, I ran my fingers over it. Hissen did not like that. He immediately cried and I had to stop. Something was wrong.