Pericardial Tuberculosis in the “Last Mile”

Nyaya
Nirajan

Duncan Maru, MD, PhD, a resident in BWH’s Division of Global Health Equity, is a co-founder of the organization, Nyaya Health. Nyaya’s mission is to realize the right to health by delivering transparent, data-driven health care for Nepal’s rural poor.

In a recent blog post for Nyaya, Maru writes about a patient named Nirajan.

“Nirajan is a nine-year-old boy who had been seen by our clinicians two weeks prior and diagnosed via ultrasound with a massive pericardial effusion. The diagnosis was not hard to make, and the etiology was almost certainly to be tuberculosis. Over 12 hours away from an intensive care unit or a cardiologist, our clinicians at that time made the decision that most rural doctors would make; they prescribed Nirajan anti-tuberculosis therapy and steroids.”

Read Nirajan’s story and learn more about the work of Nyaya Health.