Bolivia has the highest number of patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis in Latin America. The disease is an issue in the Andes region and the Amazon rainforest because of limited accessibility and a shortage of trained medical staff. Leprosy and tuberculosis are also present in various regions of Bolivia.
Our impact in 2025
Bolivia
Since
2016
Local representative
Rebeca Ledezma
Diseases treated
People diagnosed during the year
Leprosy
37
Tuberculosis
1 588
MR tuberculosis*
16
Leishmaniasis
221
Patients who received socio-economic support
Leprosy
65
Tuberculosis
507
MR tuberculosis*
15
* Multidrug resistant tuberculosis
- Ministry of Health (Cochabamba department)
- Biomedical research institute of the University of San Simón (IIBISMED)
- The Ecole Technique de Santé (ETS) and the Liga Voluntaria Antituberculosa
- National Tuberculosis, leishmaniasis and leprosy control programmes
“Every year, 1500 people in Cochabamba are diagnosed with TB. 1% of them suffer from multi-drug-resistant TB. A very low number. There is a reason for this: the detection test is done in La Paz, more than six hours by car from Cochabamba. It used to take 100 days to detect MDR-TB. But this is quicker with the GeneXpert, and now MDR-TB is detected in 9 days.”
GeneXpert: detecting tuberculosis in 90 minutes
The World Health Organization has recommended the use of the GeneXpert since 2010; a molecular test that detects TB in 90 minutes.
In the areas where Damien Foundation is active in Bolivia, the GeneXpert is now used to detect tuberculosis. It used to take an average of 100 days for a patient to be diagnosed and commence treatment in Bolivia. Today, that is only 9 days.
