It was a story no doctor wants to tell. 

But at Botšabelo Hospital in Maseru, Lesotho, during a recent training on mental health care, a doctor related the story of a man who had successfully completed two grueling years of treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR-TB—only to succumb to a different, devastating illness, that far too often goes unseen.   

Usually poor. Generally living in the slums or countryside. Busy just trying to stay alive. People who suffer tuberculosis struggle to be seen, let alone treated.

On behalf of them, today Dr. Paul Farmer, a founder of Partners In Health, and Dr. Joanne Liu, the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières, published a jointly written op-ed in Project Syndicate, a Czech-based organization that offers free news commentary to some 500 media outlets around the world. 

Partners In Health community health worker Patricia Mankuah often uses a motorcycle taxi to reach her patients in Harper, a town in remote southern Liberia, and last summer, she frequently hired Paul*, a friendly, trusted 30-something with a reliable motorcycle.