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Zelda Hansen has been detained behind a barbed wire fence for nearly two years, but has never committed a crime. Zelda and others held at the Jose Pearson Hospital in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa have XDR-TB.
Many years ago, Zelda was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She was treated at home with regular medicines and quickly recovered. In December of 2006, she became aware once again of TB-like symptoms, which were not so easy to shake. The 37 year old mother of 3 was admitted to hospital. The treatments they gave her there continued to have little effect.
The doctors tried more drugs in different combinations, but to no avail. Zelda was diagnosed with Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis or MDR-TB and transferred to Jose Pearson, an isolated specialist hospital some 650km from Cape Town. The hospital currently houses 300 patients, all of whom are detained there, some against their will.
Some months passed and Zelda still failed to respond to treatment. As the doctors had suspected for some time, Zelda had XDR-TB, an extremely drug resistant strain which is almost untreatable. It is almost always fatal. As the months wore on, Zelda remained isolated from her husband Ricardo, and her children. More months passed. Zelda didn’t improve. Her situation became unbearable.
At the end of December 2007, Zelda was among the 31 XDR-TB patients who, along with 57 MDR-TB sufferers, could stand it no more. The patients cut through the fences and fled to visit their families, despite being highly contagious with a deadly disease. The patients were rounded up and returned to the high security hospital, where those left alive, including Zelda, reside to this day.
Zelda joined the hospital patients committee to help voice patient’s concerns. She hopes to one day be released and reunited with her children, who are now being looked after by her husband, who also works full time as a welder, and his parents. However, in the face of XDR-TB, Zelda’s prognosis is not a positive one.
As the plane descended into Durban, South Africa, a wave of wellbeing washed over me. Three weeks filming in a safe environment. In comparison to working in hostile locations - Bosnia during the war, Iraq post invasion or Congo at any time - making a film about TB in South Africa seemed safe enough.
Then it dawned on me - if anything this was more dangerous, because I wouldn’t be able to see or hear the danger. If any of us caught the newest strain of Extreme Drug Resistant or XDR TB, it would mean at least two years of painful treatment with no guarantee of a cure and a 50% mortality rate – great!
Making a film about the current world TB crisis and the newly discovered drug resistant strains presented real challenges. For me the biggest one was how to protect ourselves without creating a barrier between us and the people we were filming. There was no way we could walk into someone’s shack with a mask on. TB is, of course, highly contagious until treatment starts. As it turned out, everything worked well. When we found our TB family, they were happy to let us wear a mask inside their house as long as the neighbours didn’t see.
For the duration of the shoot there were a lot of nervous coughs and raised eyebrows, but so far, we’re all OK and I think we came back with a very strong film.
