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"I am lucky to be living here." Sabina takes her TB medicine from a small, plastic container. "I came to La Paz three years ago to look for work. My family is from the far south of the country. There is nothing down there. Most people don't even have electricity."
Alone in the city, there is no one to support Sabina in the long and sustained effort required to follow her TB treatment, which must be taken regularly or it will not work. But at this government clinic outside the capital city, she is getting the close monitoring she needs and the nurses have found a novel way to keep track of their patients.
Nurse Angela Calderon Maiz takes the empty container from Sabina, refills it, places it in a woollen bag with the form of a face and hangs it on a large notice board, organized with the names of all the clinic's TB patients. "It helps the staff to remember who is who," Dr. Simón Pancera Loza explains. It is all part of creating a social framework to bind the patient into the process of taking their medication systematically. This is the key to treating TB."
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