Feature Stories

Dr Rirhandzu Norah Mongwe is on the frontlines of Limpopo Province’s COVID-19 vaccination response.

Marthe Apuwa Mbila is a single mother of two children living in Lusengo, a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

12-year-old Christine Kisianan lives in a remote village in Kajiado County, one of the regions in Kenya most affected by the greater Horn of Africa drought, which is in its fourth year.

Tangomo Tansia is a hero. The volunteer health worker delivers precious polio vaccines via canoe to communities in locations far from his home in Kikwit, in southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Reginald Omulo, a farmer in Migori County, Kenya, noticed that the tobacco farming his community practiced was affecting families’ health and well-being.

Stefina Mocuvele looks on as her grandson Nolege plays happily with his siblings. It’s a far cry from his condition three years ago, when a bout of malaria landed the then six-year-old in hospital, 10 kilometers away from their home in Matuba locality in the Chókwè district of Gaza province, Mozambique.

“Blood cannot be manufactured. It is only through donations that it reaches those in need,” says Dominique Linguedze, a voluntary blood donor in Brazzaville, the riverside capital of the Republic of the Congo. “To give my blood is to give a little of myself. It makes me feel like a heroine.”

Growing up in the fishing village of Chorkor in Ghana’s Greater Accra region, 46-year-old Mary* experienced regular bouts of malaria. “I remember the fever, the profuse sweating and chills that shook my entire body, and I never want to go through that again,” she says. 

In 2018, 60-year-old James Kimeu Mulei suffered a badly broken ankle that left him unable to walk after a violent attack. A few years previously, this story could well have ended with a permanent injury that restricted Mulei’s ability to work and live a full life. 

When a man in Temessadou M’Boket – a village in the densely forested southern Guinea region – died in early August 2021 after suffering fever, headache and haemorrhage, Fassara Diawara, the head of a local clinic, was quick to act.