Photographer Misha Friedman photographs the effort to battle an epidemic.

Fueled by rising rates of HIV and a health system crippled by years of political, economic and social transition, tuberculosis in the Ukraine has proven extremely difficult to eradicate. Whereas TB rates in most regions of the world has stabilized or declined, it has continued to spread in the Ukraine, which accounts for 11% of all cases in Eastern Europe. In recent years a number of NGOs, including the World Health Organization, have taken up the fight to contain the epidemic.

Related video: James Nachtwey’s project on the devastating effects of Tuberculosis: Images of a Forgetten Plague