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Jean Chung

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14 images Created 10 Sep 2019

Living with Tuberculosis in Rio, Brazil. 2009

Brazil is one of the 22 hard-burden countries of tuberculosis in the world, where 82,000 TB patients live. In the state of Rio, there are more than 14,000 TB patients were reported in 2007. Places like Rocinha favela where overcrowded houses give little room to breathe for poor residents, who have higher risks of getting infected with TB than the people with bigger houses and rooms. According to Rio's Health Department, 1,250 cases of MDR-TB (Multi-drug Resistant Tuberculosis) were reported between 1989 and 2008.
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  • Lights from densely-built houses of Rocinha favela dot the valley in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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  • Geraldo Cruz de Souza, 56, was selling drinks at a kiosk on the beach in Rio de Janeiro until October 2008 when he was already diagnosed with TB and taking medicine. His condition deteriorated so fast; within five months, he showed little sign of progress, and was losing weight so much. Although he was one month before the final blood test, he still had stomach pains. He lives inside a small cement house in Rocinha with one window that is covered, thus making it harder for him to cure. Without a job, he pays the rent from his son's earning as a janitor, and lives off of the food from his ex-wife and donation from neighbors.
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  • Geraldo Cruz de Souza, 56, rests in the window of a hall way where his cement house is located inside Rocinha favela in Rio. De Souza was selling drinks at a kiosk on the beach in Rio de Janeiro until October 2008 when he was already diagnosed with TB and taking medicine. His condition deteriorated so fast; within five months, he showed little sign of progress, and was losing weight so much. Although he was one month before the final blood test, he still had stomach pains. He lives inside a small concrete house with no window, thus making it harder for him to cure. Without a job, he pays the rent from his son's earning as a janitor, and lives off of the food from his ex-wife and donation from neighbors.
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  • Aldaci Barbosa Antunes, 28, is an MDR-TB (Multi-drug Resistant Tuberculosis) patient who is being treated at Helio Fraga Hospital in Curicica, Rio de Janeiro. A Belford Roxo resident, Antunes was first diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2005, but gave up treatment after four months. When he received the second treatment in 2006, he was pronounced cured after 11 months, however, re-diagnosed with TB the third time in 2008. He did not know why he was not cured, however, he thinks giving up in the first place had bad consequences.
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  • Flávio de Oliveira Pires, 34, leans against the door in his kitchen as he cooks lunch. He is a DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) patient at Gustavo Capanema Family Health Center in Elis Regina. He did not show up at the clinic to receive medicine, so the nurses went to his house to hand it in. He and his girlfriend broke up when their daughter was only one year old, and he could not live with her because of his health conditions.
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  • Janaina Cristina Lima Francisco, 30, coughs as she prepares to leave the house to get a regular check-up at the Helio Fraga Research Center in Curicica, which takes two and half-hours to reach by public transportation from her home in the Babi section of Belford Roxo. Janaína is an MDR-TB patient who had failed the treatments at least three times. She has five sons who lives with her. Her husband left her after she caught the tuberculosis. She said her children would be better off living in orphanages after she dies.
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  • Janaína, at right, lies on the bed inside the MDR-TB patients' Unit at Raphael Paula Souza Hospital next to Fraga Center in Curicica, which takes two and half-hours to reach by public transportation from her home in the Babi section of Belford Roxo. A single mother with five sons and the MDR-TB patient who had failed the treatments at least three times, she was unexpectedly hospitalized that day, and the children's council in her neighborhood took her children at home.
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  • Aridio Ramos Quintanilha, Jr., 48, has been suffering from tuberculosis for 12 years, and was homeless when the family found him at a construction site. Now he is hospitalized in Santa Maria Hospital, however, with both of his lungs virtually exhausted, he has little hope to survive too long.
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  • Nurses put on a diaper for a male tuberculosis patient at Ary Parraira Hospital in Niterói. According to Dr. Jorge O. Henrique, the director of the hospital, there were 73 TB patients, 16 of them women. More than 50-60% of the patients were co-infected with HIV, and most of them were homeless.
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  • Male tuberculosis patients inside their ward at Ary Parraira Hospital in Niterói. According to Dr. Jorge O. Henrique, the director of the hospital, there were 73 TB patients, 16 of them women. More than 50-60% of the patients were co-infected with HIV, and most of them were homeless.
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  • Female patients with tuberculosis rest in the veranda with a fence at Santa Maria Hospital in Taquara. It is important for TB patients to have proper ventilation and air to cure the disease.
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  • A tuberculosis patient coughs as he holds an oxygen mask inside the male patients' ward at Santa Maria Hospital in Taquara.
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  • Ivan Mesquita de Araujo, 42, lies in a bed in the MDR-TB patient unit in Raphael Hospital in Curicica. A former marvel cutter, de Araujo was first infected by tuberculosis in July 2007, received treatments. However, his condition did not improve, and he was finally diagnosed with MDR-TB in Sept 2008.
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  • An empty bed inside the female ward of tuberculosis in Santa Maria Hospital in Taquara. There were total 68 beds for both male and female tuberculosis patients at Santa Maria, and 52 beds were occupied in Jan. 2009. Of the 52, eight men and one woman had MDR-TB; and six of them were HIV/TB co-infected.
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