Holding the patient

Abstract

Successfully controlling tuberculosis will require that we fully understand all the factors involved in a patient's ability to comply with treatment as well as our assumptions about what compliance and noncompliance mean. Influences on patients' lives, such as poverty, conflict, political instability, and racial and gender inequalities, will have a great impact on the success or failure of treatment. TB services should be designed to provide the support that patients need to enable them to be cured.