For many people living with TB, daily travel to a clinic proves complicated or impossible, especially when they are very unwell, but such is the fear of antibiotic resistance and the distrust of patients that global health officials have long deemed DOTS necessary. When I asked TB expert Dr. Jennifer Furin about this protocol and forcing people to be visually observed taking their pills each day, she told me, “I know of no other field of medicine where therapy is based so completely on lack of trust toward patients.”
