Support 150 Tuberculosis Patients in Moldova

Speranta Terrei’s moderators come from many walks of life, among them head of the Regional TB Reference Laboratory in Balti. Nadejda Priscu, or Nadin as her friends affectionately call her, is an expert on the Gene XPert, a machine revolutionizing diagnosis of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Moldova has high rates of MDR-TB and this technology is giving doctors the means to pinpoint resistance and start appropriate drug therapy quickly. 

Since March 2012, Nadejda has tested 1000 specimens on the machine she adores unabashedly. “It is absolutely super!” declares Nadejda, “within 2-3 hours, we have results. It eases patients‘ anxiety because the diagnosis is immediate and doctors have confirmatory results to start treatment.” Nadejda praises the Gene XPert for “enabling us to detect more cases and to treat them earlier, before the disease progresses another month.”

In the first photo, Nadine is at her favorite apparatus, scanning a specimen. In the second photo, a patient is giving a sputum sample for testing.

On her voluntary role of moderator, Nadejda says the laboratory skills are handy, but mainly “it is daily life skills, giving moral and psychological support in addition to medicine.” She continues, “I have seen much suffering from TB and Speranta Terrei gives me the possibility to help reduce it.” At Speranta Terrei, we are fortunate to have offered 11 tuberculosis patients treatment support from such a capable and caring moderator as Nadejda.

We would like to thank new and continuing donors for extending your hand to TB patients in Balti. All of us at Speranta Terrei wish you and your family much good health. In English, we say Happy New Year! In Romanian, we say, Un An Nou Fericit!