Slowing the spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in Lesotho means going to many more places than hospitals and clinics.

It means going to taxi associations. Mining companies. High schools. Primary schools. Prisons and police facilities.

When asked how many tuberculosis (TB) patients she’s treated over the past 20 years in Kazakhstan, Dr. Zhenisgul Daugarina smiled before giving numbers for just the past three.

"Over the past three years, 268 patients have been discharged from (our) MDR/XDR-TB treatment department, and another 568 have been transferred to other units to continue treatment," she said.

Partners In Health and collaborators are taking big steps forward in the fight against tuberculosis in Kazakhstan, where increasing use of the first new TB drugs in decades, an innovative clinical trial, and digital technologies that better connect patients to caregivers all are raising hopes for more successful treatments.

It was a landmark, a triumph, a watershed moment—without fanfare. On Oct. 6, two doctors stood under the awning of a yellow hospital on the western edge of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and gave instructions to the first patients to be discharged from the first tuberculosis treatment program of its kind in the country.

“If you have a problem, if you have a question, call us,” one doctor said. “You have my number.”

Partners In Health (PIH), Interactive Research and Development (IRD) and the Zero TB Initiative (ZTBI) welcome the release of the interim results from the STREAM Stage 1 clinical trial. This is the first clinical trial of a new treatment regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), and we congratulate the investigators for successfully conducting it.