Lungi was presented with her award at the 41st Union Conference on Lung Health in Berlin, Germany on 11 November.
She won the award for her TB diary, her personal account of battling to get diagnosed and treated for TB last year.
‘I had the classic symptoms – coughing for several weeks and night sweats. However, visits to clinics didn’t lead to a TB test. Nurses at Plumstead Clinic in Cape Town and Merebank Clinic in my hometown of Durban shrugged when I enquired whether a TB test wouldn’t be a good idea and handed me bottles of children’s cough mixture and antibiotics. They didn’t believe I had TB,’ said Lungi in her diary.
Lungi started at Health-e on an internship programme last year sponsored by the Atlantic Philanthropies.
Click here to read her story.
