In the soft light of morning in Gujranwala, Pakistan, 17-year-old Mafeefa Naveed stands at her family’s doorstep, a smiling as she greets another day. A first-year college student with dreams of studying law, Mafeefa embodies resilience and renewal—a living testament to the possibility of reclaiming life after the relentless grip of drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Just a few months ago, she completed an 18-month treatment regimen at a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic for the programmatic management of drug-resistant TB in Gujranwala. “I feel like I’ve got my life back,” she says. But behind her words lies a story of immense struggle, one of missed school days, social isolation, and constant reminders of a disease that threatened to steal her future.
Mafeefa’s journey toward healing was anything but straightforward. When she first fell ill, she assumed it was a seasonal fever. “I had a fever that kept coming back every few hours,” she recalls. “Then it lasted for two straight weeks, along with coughing and night sweats. That’s when we knew it was something serious.”
