In the lead up to World AIDS Day, 2008, on December 1, photographer Brendan Bannon is in Kenya and will be providing images every day of his travels with MSF throughout the region.

Day 8 - WORLD AIDS DAY

Today is World AIDS Day. But there is also Malaria, Meningitus,  opportunistic infections to many to count and of course Tuberculosis.
Outside the hospital as I write this there is a huge public rally to  mark the day. For some it is a day of mourning, for others it is a  celebration and an affirmation of life.

Today is World AIDS Day.

On the wards it is another day of work for the  doctors and  another  day of struggle or reckoning for the patients. Tuberculosis is resurgent in places like Homa Bay-places where people  live in poverty. The living quarters are dark and  cramped with many people sharing  a single room house.

HIV  compromises   immunity and allows TB to take hold. The living conditions contribute to  its  spread. The treatment for TB iscomplex and long.

Lillian, an MSf patient is in the hospital today with a  relapse of  TB. She is  hooked up to a tube that drains the pus from her lungs.  She has  at her bedside table a small purse, a purple plastic cup filled with porridge, a mobile phone charger, many satchets of pills and a small red mirror.

“I want to see my face. So I brought the mirror. In the morning after I wash I look to see myself.3

“I want to see my face. So I brought the mirror. In the morning after I wash I look to see myself. When I loked before I saw some fuzz from the blanket. I brushed them off and  I was amused.”

Her eyes are lively, inquisitive and probing.

“Before when I looked in the mirror I was  fat and more beautiful. Today I see I am thin and not looking like myself.”

Lillian knows that  if the treatment works that  she may  again look like she did before. When she looks in the mirror in the future she may be fat and beautiful once more.