Lindiwe Mkwanazi (32) looks past her left leg that’s resting on a low table in the direction of the small box-style TV. Sitting in the one-seater maroon couch, her body is as still as the building she spends almost all of her time in – a run-down block of flats in Mayville, an increasingly industrialised suburb just a few kilometres from Durban’s central business district.

He once wore his blue-and-white striped Hugo Boss shirt with pride but it became a source of despair for Bongani Ngcobo, who has tuberculosis.

Bongani Ngcobo looks up at the shacks perched unsteadily on the towering green hills around him. He steps off the tar road on to the sandy path – the starting point of his homebound hike. His shack is about 50m away but the uphill walk makes it seem like kilometres.

New research has brought into question the World Health Organisation’s recommendation that patients diagnosed with both HIV and tuberculosis be put onto antiretrovirals straight away.

It was May 23 2010 and 21-year-old Funiwe Mbhamhama woke to the beautiful but forlorn sound of church singing. She looked at the sun streaming in through the crack in the orange curtains of her Khayelitsha home. It wasn't Sunday. There should be no singing.