“Buddy, what’s the difference between taking the medicine before my meal and having it afterward?”
“Buddy, I feel some pain on the left side of my chest. Is it a sign that my TB has become worse?”
“Buddy, I missed a dose. Does that matter?”
Every day questions like these pop-up in 57 Zone, an online peer-to-peer support group mainly for TB patients. In the zone, TB patients under treatment are asking the most questions and it falls to a young fellow called Caretaker Buddy by other TB patients to answer all these questions. He is Xu Xinghua, a volunteer and peer consultant of the 57 Zone.
30-year-old Xu is from the rural red earth plateau of Yunnan Province. His own experience fighting TB was very frustrating. Allergic to the TB medicine, he suffered severe skin rashes all over his body and liver function failure compounded by bone tuberculosis. Multiple times he was on the brink of death. The unbearable pain he suffered in the treating process made him almost give up, but he credits his survival to his family’s support, and the medical help and psychological support he received from the health staff and peer consultants of the 57 Zone. Xu persevered in his treatment and is now fully recovered from TB.
Xu said, “I have gone through the treatment, and I know first-hand that it is by no means easy to stick with it to the end. I owe my cure to all the medical staff who accompanied and cared for me all along way and the peers of the 57 Zone. If not for them, I would not be who I am now. Because of this, after I recovered from the disease, I decided to stay and share my experience, my stories and my knowledge about TB with other patients and accompany them throughout their treatment. For the health of the patients, I’m willing to be their caretaker buddy.”
Currently, Xu is the administrator of the Yunnan Group of the 57 Zone, an online communication platform for the former and current TB patients. The Zone works according to the principle of never deceiving, giving up or abandoning any patient, but instead of providing each patient with thoughtful help and support.
Every day Xu logs into the communication Apps (QQ Group and Wechat Group) of the 57 Zone, to work as a peer consultant answering questions raised by patients and helping to ease their anxiety and worry about the disease. By December 2019, he had provided online consultation through the Zone for nearly 5,620 hours through his PC and mobile phone; he had helped more than 984 TB patients through face-to-face consultations, including 191 drug-resistant TB patients. Most of the general TB patients have successfully completed treatment, and the drug-resistant TB patients have paid more attention to infection control within their family and made the suitable treatment based on their situation. In addition, he made time to offer patients considerable help offline as well, like fetching food and water for gravely ill inpatients confined to bed, to accompany patients unfamiliar with the hospital to go through medical examinations and diagnosis, and provide encouragement to inpatients with no family to take care of them.
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the beginning of 2020, some TB patients could not go to see the doctor for re-examination and medicine prescription. To ensure uninterrupted treatment of the disease, Xu cooperated with volunteers at the 57 Zone and the medical staff of hospitals to make phone contact with patients one by one to collect information on medical examination and treatment, to provide online medical treatment and consultation service for the patients, and to mail medicine for 29 drug-resistant TB patients who couldn’t make it to the hospital, in a way to help these patients through the temporary difficulties.
Through the concerted efforts of the volunteers, medical staff and partners, the patient care group of 57 Zone keeps growing. Under the influence of the 57 Zone of Yunnan, more than nine provinces in China have established 57 Zones in their respective TB prevention and control organizations. TB patients are encouraged to act as peer consultants to help others.
In the case of Xu, even as early as when he was a patient, he began to work as a peer consultant. After his recovery in 2017, he chose to stay as a volunteer with the 57 Zone and plans to continue doing so in the future.