"In May of last year, I was in poor health and I found out that I had TB", said Ko Thia, a 28-year-old who works in a nylon rope factory to support his wife and two-year-old son. "I started TB treatment but it cost a lot even for a couple of weeks."
Then Ko Thia learned about The Union's PICTS Programme at the Township Health Centre, where he was able to receive his TB treatment for free. He recovered with the support PICTS staff and volunteers. "I followed absolutely their instruction on taking the pills", he said.
Now that he knows how frightening TB can be, he empathises with other patients and wants to help them. Through PICTS he participates in health education awareness-raising on TB.
"The more I can share about the prevention and cure of this disease, the more I can save the people around me", he said. Counseling TB patients and encouraging them to take their pills, dose by dose, is very satisfying to him.
This is vital to break the TB cycle in our communities, he tells them, and prevent the development of a worse problem -- multidrug-resistant TB.
The Union's Programme to Increase Catchment of Tuberculosis Suspects (PICTS) is funded by TB REACH. Now in its second year, the goal of the programme is to double the number of TB cases identified each year. PICTS serves seven townships in Mandalay in collaboration with township health centres. Key staff are supported by volunteers, such as Ko Thia, from each township, who are primarily persons living with TB or who had experience with TB-related issues. As of April 2013, PICTS has served 182, 348 people and offered 3,821 health education sessions.