Mircea,[1] a former miner in his fifties, spent the last four years of his life succumbing to Extensively Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB)[2] at the Pines Tuberculosis Sanatorium, which is located high on a mountain. After seven years with this otherwise curable illness, his family wanted little to do with him. He was one of the many patients who doctors in Romania refer to as “social cases”[3] [4]According to Dr. Ionescu at the Pines, patients like Mircea are “repeat clients” with “no chance of escape.” They are people with overlapping social and economic difficulties, such as poverty, homelessness, alcohol use, lack of family support, as well as the social stigma that comes with having TB in Romania.

For Romanians with XDR-TB, except for the lucky few who get on a bus or a plane and become medical refugees, throwing themselves at the mercy of other European countries, someday never comes.

Multi-Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) is a strain of TB which is resistant to the two most powerful known anti-TB drugs, requiring intensive and careful management if patients stand a chance of recovery.