Lucy Chesire
"To make TB a disease of the past, we need to turn declarations into deeds and promises into programmes." -Lucy Chesire
Lucy Chesire is a Clinical Nutritionist originally from Eldoret, Kenya. Lucy's HIV status was revealed to her in 1992, and in 1997 she courageously became the first female health professional to publicly acknowledge having the disease. In 2000, Lucy started experiencing persistent coughing, weight loss, night sweats and a loss of appetite. An x-ray revealed that she had TB in her chest. Later, the TB infection would move to her lymph nodes and knee joints, resulting in several surgeries and a seven month hospital stay.
"It's really strange," Lucy recalls, "because for 10 years I was able to live with HIV very well and manage it in a very, very good way. And it's only getting to know that I had TB that actually almost brought me to my death-bed...somebody can live with HIV for many years. The suffering I went through was because of TB."
Ultimately, though, it was TB that created a door for her life-saving antiretroviral treatment for HIV and it was TB that launched Lucy into TB and HIV advocacy efforts.
Driven by her harrowing and moving personal experiences through TB-HIV co-infection, Lucy has become a key figure in the global TB-HIV activist community. In 2004, Lucy spoke at the fourth TB-HIV Working Group Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and revealed that the driving force behind her TB-HIV activism and her 10 years of advocacy locally and internationally is to stop other people from suffering as she has suffered. Lucy speaks frequently of her frustration at the limited resources available to people who have found themselves in similar life threatening situations.
Lucy Chesire is the Executive Director/ Secretary to the Board of TB ACTION Group an organization founded in 2009 by a group of TB and TB-HIV patients who came together for a worthy cause to stem the ever growing public health problem Tuberculosis. She is a well known and travelled international TB-HIV advocate who has been on the forefront advancing the TB and TB-HIV agenda globally.
Watch Lucy speak at the Global Leaders' Forum.
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