In May 2018, Khin Mar Aye, a 40-year-old woman, attended a health education session in the Ye-U township of the Sagaing region of Myanmar when a community volunteer from The Union tuberculosis project recognised her symptoms of cough, fever, weight loss, and reduced appetite as tuberculosis. She was immediately referred to the nearest mobile clinic, run by the tuberculosis team of the Ye-U township, where she underwent sputum testing and chest x-ray screening. When the sputum smear result was positive, Gene-Xpert testing was done, and she was diagnosed with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Khin Mar Aye was then started on a 20-month treatment regimen and within 2 weeks her cough and fever had reduced, and she was feeling substantially better with increased appetite. To further support her recovery, Khin Mar Aye was eligible, due to being registered with the Ye-U township health centre, to receive additional monetary and nutritional support and care from the community-based multidrug-resistant tuberculosis care project; for example, subsidisation of transportation costs for visits to the tuberculosis clinic and hospital for follow-up care. The volunteer who originally helped Khin Mar Aye to be diagnosed has visited her regularly throughout her treatment, monitoring side-effects from the medication and providing psychosocial support and counselling to ensure she is able to continue the full course of treatment. Adherence for this treatment can be low due to the length of the treatment course, including 7 months of injections, and due to the various adverse effects, such as insomnia, joint pain, and hearing problems. “The support from the community volunteer and the health-care provider has helped me to stay on my treatment, even during the difficult times when I was struggling with side-effects from the medicines”, says Khin Mar Aye. She admits that taking long-term medication can be frustrating, but appreciates the necessity of what she is doing: “I've been sick for many weeks, but I have to care for my daughters [aged 7 and 10 years] and earn a living for us. My goal is to be cured.” Before being diagnosed, Khin Mar Aye thought she had probably contracted a cold or flu virus. She had never known anyone with tuberculosis and was unfamiliar with the disease. She had experienced symptoms for around 5 weeks, during which time she visited the private, local clinic in her village a couple of times and was prescribed medicines to help relieve the cough and fever. However, her health continued to deteriorate causing her to have to take a break from her job; she was also unable to do basic housework, with her eldest daughter stepping in to help. In Myanmar, health-care workers are trying to combat the cultural taboos surrounding diseases such as tuberculosis that increase stigma and create barriers to treatment. There is little awareness of what a diagnosis of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis means in local communities; for example, if someone is infected, the individual is often shunned for fear of transmission. Children also face discrimination in schools and are unable to attend classes because the teachers and parents want to avoid contact. However, children with tuberculosis are usually not infectious, and so will usually not pass on tuberculosis to either other children or adults. Sometimes, people diagnosed with tuberculosis are more affected by the discrimination they experience than the symptoms of the disease, and it can lead to some patients discontinuing their medication. At first, Khin Mar Aye's husband struggled to accept his wife's diagnosis due to the stigma surrounding the disease in their community. He was nervous about the term drug-resistant, because he believed it was an indication that treatment might not be effective, as well as the long treatment course and how it would affect their family income. The volunteer did contact tracing in the whole family, using sputum samples and chest x-ray screening, to rule out tuberculosis infection and, despite his initial uncertainty, Khin Mar Aye's husband now has improved understanding of what multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is and how he should care and support his wife; he is grateful to all those who have contributed to his wife getting the appropriate treatment. For Khin Mar Aye, the road to recovery from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis has been long and hard, but now, after 19 months of treatment, her health is improving. She remains grateful to all those who have helped her and who provided her with the encouragement she needed to adhere to her treatment regimen to the end.