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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Joan van Dyk in Johannesburg

‘I wasn’t sure I’d make it’: how a new mother’s brush with TB could mean better treatment for pregnant women

Pregnancy Johns Hopkins University
A middle-aged African woman in jeans and a red shirt sits on stairs looking at the camera
Busisiwe Beko has been calling for the collection of clinical trial data on pregnancy and TB since she had the illness while pregnant 18 years ago. Photograph: Chris de Beer-Procter/The Guardian

When she was pregnant with her second child, Busisiwe Beko was living with HIV, but that didn’t worry her. She had been taking antiretrovirals for years and as an experienced Aids activist in South Africa she knew that as long as she continued to take her pills every day, her second baby would be born free of infection, just like her first.

But another illness was lurking in Beko’s lungs: tuberculosis (TB) had been hiding behind the common signs of pregnancy. The illness turned her pregnancy into a nightmare.

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