Timpiyan, Kenya - Zoonotic TB survivor

My name is Timpiyan and I am a zoonotic tuberculosis (TB) survivor. I come from the Kajiado County in Kenya, and I am originally from a Maasai tribe. Since 2016 I have been a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Civil Society Task Force on TB. In 2011, I realized that something was wrong with my health when I started losing weight while my stomach was constantly swollen. I had a whole body scan at the hospital in Nairobi and the doctors told me that they saw a big mass in my upper abdomen which had to be removed. It turned out it was pus, and when I woke up after a 7-hour surgery, the doctors told me that I had TB and that I had probably been infected by drinking unpasteurized milk or eating raw meat from cattle infected with TB.
Source: WHO Feature Stories - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: tuberculosis [subject], tb, tuberculosis [subject], tb, African Region [region], Feature [doctype], Kenya [country] Source Type: news