FEND-TB

story

The primary purpose of the FEND for TB Consortium is to evaluate early stage diagnostics and novel diagnostic strategies for tuberculosis in the context of existing clinical algorithms in TB endemic countries.

Backstory

I was destined to design the website of Feasibility of Novel Diagnostics (FEND) for TB in Endemic Countries, way back in 1947. I was just not born yet.

The story goes that when my mum was a few months old, the partition of India took place. Many like her family who migrated across the Radcliff line, and carried the burden of the borders, suffered human loss and the dignity of life. My grandfather decided back then, in 1947, that he would ensure that one of his children would study medicine.

My mother was to be that child. All her life she worked in government hospitals, her outpatient queue often stretching beyond the hospital gates. Every year my grandfather would visit her at the hospital, and sit quietly on a high stool borrowed from the watchman, watching with pride as his daughter served humanity.

When I reached middle school, my brother and I were given the house key as a token of responsibility. With both our parents at work, we no longer needed to depend on neighbours and nannies to open the house door when we returned from school. Having the same genetic coding, my brother and I would also default together, with both of us forgetting to take the key and getting locked out of home. We would then tread to mum’s hospital to get her spare key. The hospital where she worked was called Maa (meaning Mother) and I frequented it often (once a fortnight to be precise, as we used to eat dinner with her during her fortnightly night duties) strutting around with a sense of ownership and authority. On that particular key-forgetting day, one of the nurses recognised me and directed me to my mum’s OPD. She was conducting some sort of camp outdoors, white cotton mask tied across her mouth (N95 wasn’t invented then), Littmann around the neck. She was sitting behind an extra wide desk that worked as a natural social distancing barrier. There was a rhythm to her examination. She asked a few questions with her head titled down as she scribbled on the patient’s paper, then used the chest piece of her steth like a weapon to tilt the cheek of the patient to the side (and away from her face), then Littmann on chest, take a deep breath, move back on the sound of a potential cough, lift head, scribble on prescription, send for labs, pathology, pharmacy.

She was working with TB patients.

That I would one day, 38 years later, be chosen to work in the same domain, as a web and graphic designer, is because of the blessing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

There is no one more proud of the design work that I have done in the field of tuberculosis than my mum. I live in the reflected glory of my mum, of April, David, Andrea and the 76 people listed on this website who strive to do path-breaking work in the field of tuberculosis.

The original logo was to be retained, but I managed to convince the team to change the colours, giving the logo depth, readability and the necessary contrast. In April I found my meticulous match – proactive, precise and a pleasure to work with.