KwaMsane Township sits amid rolling hills in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province. Drive 30 minutes to the west and elephants, giraffes, zebras, and rhinos often stroll by the side of a highway that cuts through a game park. A few kilometers to the east lie sprawling sugarcane fields, which shimmer in the subtropical sun and appear to spill into the Indian Ocean. KwaMsane is beautiful, but it has one of the world’s highest rates of multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis, an often fatal form of the disease.
In November 2011, Jabu Ngcobo, 25, felt a pain in her side and went to the KwaMsane clinic, which resembles a trailer park. The clinic’s trailers—called parkhomes here—surround a small covered courtyard that serves as a waiting room, with patients sitting in plastic chairs. “I was all along thinking I had MDR TB because my two brothers and my sister had it,” says Ngcobo.
To read the original article: The Machine that Will Help End TB | MIT Technology Review
