Light at the end of the tunnel: TB screening for Pakistan’s miners comes out of the clinic and on to the coalface

Those who work underground in mines have a high rate of tuberculosis, but they risk losing their job if they take time off to travel to a clinic. Now mobile technology is helping diagnose miners at work

Walking out of a mine shaft, “even the air seems strange”, says Tariq Irfan, who has worked in Pakistan’s coalmines since he was a teenager. The tunnels are less than six feet high in places, reinforced with planks of wood and canvas sacks. Dust swirls in the light from workers’ head torches, their only source of illumination.

They must stoop as they move through the mine to the end of the tunnel, where they repeatedly strike the wall ahead of them to break off pieces of coal. These are loaded into sacks on the backs of mules, who are driven back out into the sunshine to deposit the coal in heaped piles on the mountainside.

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