I was exposed to the plight of children with tuberculosis early in my 32 years of experience as a physician. I was a medical intern in a provincial hospital in Peru’s jungle region. I noticed Adrian, a severely malnourished 3-year-old child in the corner of the ward, feverish and breathing with great difficulty. His condition didn’t respond to pneumonia treatment, and a chest X-ray revealed liquid surrounding the right lung. My attending physician concluded that Adrian had severe malnutrition and pneumonia and decided to continue his antibiotic treatment. Adrian died on the third day of my watch. An autopsy revealed the little boy had been afflicted with TB. That was likely why he died, not malnutrition or pneumonia. We later found out that Adrian was living with an uncle who had recently died “coughing blood.” My attending physician confessed that he had been so focused on managing the presumed pneumonia that he didn’t think about TB as an alternative diagnosis.

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