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It is deeply disturbing that the world largely forgot children when confronting tuberculosis (TB) - the deadliest infectious disease. Stronger data collection on childhood TB began only about a decade and a half ago, and the first child-friendly formulation was introduced just ten years ago, in Kenya in 2016. At world's largest AIDS conference, the 26th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2026) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a special publication was launched by Humana People to People India showcasing four success stories of children (from socially and economically marginalised communities) tiding to cure and health.
The publication “Every Child Deserves A Healthy Future! Four Childhood TB Success Stories by Humana People to People India” was launched at India Meet at 26th International AIDS Conference (AIDS2026), chaired by Dr Ishwar Gilada, Governing Council member of International AIDS Society (IAS), Chair of IAS Asia Pacific, Programme Committee member of AIDS 2026 conference, and Emeritus President of AIDS Society of India (ASI).
In the crowded lanes of Delhi’s older neighbourhoods, TB still exacts a heavy toll on children whose parents scrape by as daily-wage labourers, rickshaw pullers and migrant security guards. The disease is both preventable and curable. Yet social barriers — lost wages, long clinic journeys, side-effects that make treatment feel worse than the illness, and the quiet cruelty of stigma — continue to block the path to recovery.
Dr Kartik Shah, Additional Project Director of Gujarat State AIDS Control Society (GSACS); Dr N Kumarasamy, Chief and Director of Infectious Disease Medical Centre VHS (Chennai); Dr Shibu Vijayan, CMO and Medical Director of QureAI; Ishdeep Kohli, Indian science journalist; Peter Floriano Borges, President of Human Touch Foundation and faculty, Goa University; Maria Rosina Celina Menezes, noted community leader and rights advocate; young people living with HIV from Human Touch Foundation; Pankaj Patel, Project Director, Gujarat AIDS Awareness and Prevention (GAP); Jogendra Upadhyay, GAP Project Director; and others, also attended the meet.
This publication of Humana People to People India was also shared with several distinguished delegates at AIDS 2026, including: Kilford Zimondi, Country Director, Humana People to People South Africa; Luc Armand Bodea, Director of ICASA (Africa's largest AIDS STIs and TB conference) and Executive Director of Society for AIDS in Africa; Professor Jeanine Umutesi Condo, Local Chair of IAS Conference on HIV Science 2025 (Rwanda), former Director General of Rwanda Biomedical Center, former Dean and Principal of University of Rwanda, CEO of Center for Innovative Impact and Capacity Building for Health Information and Nutrition (Rwanda) and Secretary General of SAA/ ICASA; Dr Richard Nchabi Kamwi, former Minister of Health, Namibia (known for championing malaria Elimination and won WHO Gold Medal and Harvard University Leadership Award in Health) and President of SAA/ ICASA; Fairoze Diedricks of Y+ Global (Global Network of Young People Living with HIV); Nelly Munyasia, Executive Director of Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK - part of IPPF); Dr Edison Oduor, Programme Director, Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK); Dr Katia Edmundo, Executive Director of CEDAPS (Center for Health Promotion) that works on community led HIV services in Favelas (urban slums) of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Dr Mariana Abreu de Andrade, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil; Roger Pebody, Managing Editor, aidsmap (official media partner of AIDS 2026); and Shobha Shukla, Executive Director and Managing Editor CNS (official media partner of AIDS 2026).
Community health workers of Humana People to People India step in where families cannot, turning life-threatening diagnoses into stories of cure, grit and quiet revolution against stigma
In the crowded lanes of Delhi’s older neighbourhoods, TB still exacts a heavy toll on children whose parents scrape by as daily-wage labourers, rickshaw pullers and migrant security guards. The disease is both preventable and curable. Yet social barriers — lost wages, long clinic journeys, side-effects that make treatment feel worse than the illness, and the quiet cruelty of stigma — continue to block the path to recovery.
Four recent cases, documented by Humana People to People India (HPPI) and CNS, show what happens when that path is kept open by determined young patients and the frontline workers who refuse to let them fall through the cracks. Not surprising that a lot of the frontline workers are themselves TB survivors and champions.
Rajat (name changed) was 15 and in Class VII when persistent fever, weakness and shortness of breath began to hollow him out. Private doctors brought no relief. At a government children’s hospital he was diagnosed with pleural effusion — fluid in the lungs — in July 2025 and spent 12 days in hospital. Discharged but still desperately unwell, he was later confirmed to have TB at a nearby chest clinic and started on treatment.
Both his parents are migrant daily-wage earners in central and old Delhi. For weeks they faced an impossible choice: work to earn the day’s food or accompany their son for fortnightly check-ups and medicines. Treatment adherence slipped. His health remained fragile.
Humana People to People India (HPPI) field officers (frontline workers) found him during routine door-to-door screening. They counselled the parents on the non-negotiable need for uninterrupted medication and then did something more practical: they took over the role of family caregiver. For the next seven months an HPPI worker collected Rajat every fortnight, escorted him to the clinic, ensured tests were done and medicines collected. He never missed a dose.
The same team helped him enrol for the government’s Ni-Kshay Poshan Yojana — ₹1,000 a month transferred directly to his bank account — and free monthly nutritional support under the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan. On 20 April 2026 Rajat completed treatment. He is back at school.
“She has always come on time,” Rajat said of the HPPI worker. “Usually we go at 10 am and I have to miss school that day. I did not missed a single dose since then. If she was not there, my infection would not have been treated properly.”
In 2018 Archana (name changed), then in Class VII and one of six children of a rickshaw-puller family in North East Delhi, developed fever, cough, extreme weakness and giddiness. One day she coughed blood in class. At a government chest clinic she was diagnosed with TB and put on six months of treatment. Side-effects, especially vomiting, were severe, but she finished the course.
Barely three months later the symptoms returned, fiercer than before. This time the diagnosis was multidrug-resistant TB. Treatment stretched across two years. Vomiting, severe leg swelling that made even daily ablutions difficult, and damage to vision and hearing marked the ordeal. She was hospitalised twice. Still she took the medicines, day after day.
She was cured in 2021. By then her younger sister had also been diagnosed with MDR-TB; both girls recovered. Education had been interrupted for three precious years. Archana chose not to walk away. She joined HPPI as a field officer.
Today she screens key and vulnerable populations, accompanies patients to clinics, and sits with those struggling with side-effects. She herself is tested every three months. “I love my work because it gives me immense happiness to support TB patients in completing their treatments,” she said. “I share my own example of how I overcame TB and then MDR-TB. This restores their confidence.” She hopes to resume her studies while continuing the work.
Sandhya’s (name changed) first encounter with TB came in 2015 when she was about 12. Persistent fever took her to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, East Delhi’s largest government tertiary facility. Typhoid treatment failed. X-rays and sputum tests were inconclusive. Fine-needle aspiration cytology finally confirmed glandular (extrapulmonary) TB only on the third attempt — five to six months after symptoms began. Drug-susceptibility testing showed drug-sensitive disease. Nine months of treatment followed; she endured the side-effects and was cured.
Eight years later, in 2023, high fever returned. Again X-ray and sputum tests were negative. Only a CT scan revealed lung patches. Once more the disease was drug-sensitive. Another nine-month course of medication, nutritional support of ₹500 a month and free rations under the national programme brought her to cure in 2024.
Sandhya is now an HPPI field officer and TB champion. She tells others what the long diagnostic delays taught her: that for many families even reaching a local chest clinic is daunting without someone to walk beside them. Her own determination, she insists, was matched by the multi-specialty capacity of a large public hospital that still offers free advanced tests.
In a family of five siblings in East Delhi, TB arrived in rapid succession. In 2020 Ayesha’s (name changed) brother developed glandular TB and completed six months of treatment at Jag Pravesh Chandra Hospital. Three months after his cure their younger sister was diagnosed with pulmonary TB. Side-effects made mask-wearing and daily life miserable; she struggled.
Barely two months into the sister’s therapy, Ayesha herself fell ill with fever and severe abdominal pain. X-ray and sputum tests were negative; an abdominal ultrasound finally confirmed drug-sensitive abdominal TB — another form of extrapulmonary disease that is not contagious. Treatment lasted nine months. Side-effects were worse than her sister’s: severe vomiting and allergic scars. Doctors managed the reactions and insisted she continue. After two months she began to improve.
Stigma proved more enduring than the bacteria. While still on treatment and attending Class X plus computer classes, Ayesha told a friend her TB was not contagious. The friend informed the teacher, who barred her from the computer course until she was cured. Ayesha produced a doctor’s note confirming the non-contagious nature of abdominal TB. The teacher ignored it. Only after completing treatment did she return and finish the course.
Financial strain and the cumulative disruption meant Ayesha could not continue studies beyond Class XII, though she wanted to. She now works with HPPI, deliberately targeting the myths that once cost her. “I love doing my work and helping others by creating awareness — for example, by telling them which TB is infectious and which is not,” she said. “I also counsel them on why it is very important to complete the treatment and not leave it in between... People feel happy when we listen to their problems patiently and try to solve them.”
TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, not because science lacks tools but because social injustices keep those tools out of reach for the most vulnerable. Community-led follow-up — whether by family, friends or trained frontline workers — is repeatedly the decisive factor that turns diagnosis into cure.
HPPI’s field officers do the unglamorous, essential work: door-to-door screening, regular follow up and support, counselling on adherence, accompaniment to clinics, linkage to nutritional entitlements, and patient listening that restores dignity.
The boy whose caregiver came from outside the family
Rajat (name changed) was 15 and in Class VII when persistent fever, weakness and shortness of breath began to hollow him out. Private doctors brought no relief. At a government children’s hospital he was diagnosed with pleural effusion — fluid in the lungs — in July 2025 and spent 12 days in hospital. Discharged but still desperately unwell, he was later confirmed to have TB at a nearby chest clinic and started on treatment.
Both his parents are migrant daily-wage earners in central and old Delhi. For weeks they faced an impossible choice: work to earn the day’s food or accompany their son for fortnightly check-ups and medicines. Treatment adherence slipped. His health remained fragile.
Humana People to People India (HPPI) field officers (frontline workers) found him during routine door-to-door screening. They counselled the parents on the non-negotiable need for uninterrupted medication and then did something more practical: they took over the role of family caregiver. For the next seven months an HPPI worker collected Rajat every fortnight, escorted him to the clinic, ensured tests were done and medicines collected. He never missed a dose.
The same team helped him enrol for the government’s Ni-Kshay Poshan Yojana — ₹1,000 a month transferred directly to his bank account — and free monthly nutritional support under the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan. On 20 April 2026 Rajat completed treatment. He is back at school.
“She has always come on time,” Rajat said of the HPPI worker. “Usually we go at 10 am and I have to miss school that day. I did not missed a single dose since then. If she was not there, my infection would not have been treated properly.”
Two years of drug-resistant TB, then a decision to fight for others
In 2018 Archana (name changed), then in Class VII and one of six children of a rickshaw-puller family in North East Delhi, developed fever, cough, extreme weakness and giddiness. One day she coughed blood in class. At a government chest clinic she was diagnosed with TB and put on six months of treatment. Side-effects, especially vomiting, were severe, but she finished the course.
Barely three months later the symptoms returned, fiercer than before. This time the diagnosis was multidrug-resistant TB. Treatment stretched across two years. Vomiting, severe leg swelling that made even daily ablutions difficult, and damage to vision and hearing marked the ordeal. She was hospitalised twice. Still she took the medicines, day after day.
She was cured in 2021. By then her younger sister had also been diagnosed with MDR-TB; both girls recovered. Education had been interrupted for three precious years. Archana chose not to walk away. She joined HPPI as a field officer.
Today she screens key and vulnerable populations, accompanies patients to clinics, and sits with those struggling with side-effects. She herself is tested every three months. “I love my work because it gives me immense happiness to support TB patients in completing their treatments,” she said. “I share my own example of how I overcame TB and then MDR-TB. This restores their confidence.” She hopes to resume her studies while continuing the work.
Diagnosed twice the hard way, cured twice by sheer refusal to quit
Sandhya’s (name changed) first encounter with TB came in 2015 when she was about 12. Persistent fever took her to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, East Delhi’s largest government tertiary facility. Typhoid treatment failed. X-rays and sputum tests were inconclusive. Fine-needle aspiration cytology finally confirmed glandular (extrapulmonary) TB only on the third attempt — five to six months after symptoms began. Drug-susceptibility testing showed drug-sensitive disease. Nine months of treatment followed; she endured the side-effects and was cured.
Eight years later, in 2023, high fever returned. Again X-ray and sputum tests were negative. Only a CT scan revealed lung patches. Once more the disease was drug-sensitive. Another nine-month course of medication, nutritional support of ₹500 a month and free rations under the national programme brought her to cure in 2024.
Sandhya is now an HPPI field officer and TB champion. She tells others what the long diagnostic delays taught her: that for many families even reaching a local chest clinic is daunting without someone to walk beside them. Her own determination, she insists, was matched by the multi-specialty capacity of a large public hospital that still offers free advanced tests.
Three diagnoses in eleven months, and the scars that medicine cannot heal
In a family of five siblings in East Delhi, TB arrived in rapid succession. In 2020 Ayesha’s (name changed) brother developed glandular TB and completed six months of treatment at Jag Pravesh Chandra Hospital. Three months after his cure their younger sister was diagnosed with pulmonary TB. Side-effects made mask-wearing and daily life miserable; she struggled.
Barely two months into the sister’s therapy, Ayesha herself fell ill with fever and severe abdominal pain. X-ray and sputum tests were negative; an abdominal ultrasound finally confirmed drug-sensitive abdominal TB — another form of extrapulmonary disease that is not contagious. Treatment lasted nine months. Side-effects were worse than her sister’s: severe vomiting and allergic scars. Doctors managed the reactions and insisted she continue. After two months she began to improve.
Stigma proved more enduring than the bacteria. While still on treatment and attending Class X plus computer classes, Ayesha told a friend her TB was not contagious. The friend informed the teacher, who barred her from the computer course until she was cured. Ayesha produced a doctor’s note confirming the non-contagious nature of abdominal TB. The teacher ignored it. Only after completing treatment did she return and finish the course.
Financial strain and the cumulative disruption meant Ayesha could not continue studies beyond Class XII, though she wanted to. She now works with HPPI, deliberately targeting the myths that once cost her. “I love doing my work and helping others by creating awareness — for example, by telling them which TB is infectious and which is not,” she said. “I also counsel them on why it is very important to complete the treatment and not leave it in between... People feel happy when we listen to their problems patiently and try to solve them.”
The larger truth these four lives illuminate
TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease, not because science lacks tools but because social injustices keep those tools out of reach for the most vulnerable. Community-led follow-up — whether by family, friends or trained frontline workers — is repeatedly the decisive factor that turns diagnosis into cure.
HPPI’s field officers do the unglamorous, essential work: door-to-door screening, regular follow up and support, counselling on adherence, accompaniment to clinics, linkage to nutritional entitlements, and patient listening that restores dignity.
In these four stories the same pattern appears: a child or adolescent faces diagnostic delay or crushing side-effects; parents are forced to choose between livelihood and care; an HPPI worker steps into the gap; treatment is completed; and, in quite a few cases, the survivor becomes a worker who carries the same support to the next family.
The struggle against stigma and misinformation continues long after the last tablet is swallowed. Education is interrupted, computer classes barred, confidence eroded. Yet each of these young people demonstrates that cure is possible and that the cured can become the strongest advocates.
The struggle against stigma and misinformation continues long after the last tablet is swallowed. Education is interrupted, computer classes barred, confidence eroded. Yet each of these young people demonstrates that cure is possible and that the cured can become the strongest advocates.
Read the latest HPPI publication here
(Citizen News Service)
2 August 2026
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