Feature Stories

In the remote Nigerian village of Bororo-Kambari, five-year-old Fati Isah and her two siblings are lining up with other children their age and younger, preparing to be vaccinated against polio. “My mother says immunization is important and we should receive the vaccine,” she says proudly.

When Obolokamang Mahupe’s son began experiencing flu symptoms, which then worsened, it was the lessons she had learnt from the malaria response team visiting her village of Kaxwi, in Botswana’s Okavango District, that helped her recognize the symptoms and seek immediate medical assistance.

Ebola survivor Randall Varney lost nine family members, including his parents and seven siblings, to the virus in just three months in 2014, before himself contracting the disease. After learning that he could still sexually transmit the virus up to 90 days after recovery, he resolved to do everything possible to ensure the safety of his wife.

Teresa Ramos de Carvalho’s long struggle with hypertension and diabetes has turned around since she began attending regular consultations and receiving her medication free of charge at her local health facility in São Domingos in the central area of Cabo Verde.

By the end of 2022 Liberia’s COVID-19 vaccination rate was among the top three in Africa, at 81%. The country had also, at the height of the pandemic, introduced two new vaccines, immunizing more than 1.8 million children against polio and nearly 400 000 against typhoid.

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. 

On 16 March 2020, Liberia registered its first case of COVID-19. Like other countries, it grappled with the pandemic, prompting the government to implement various strategies to respond and contain the outbreak. 

With only 7766 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 125 deaths, Sierra Leone’s achievements in the face of the global pandemic have their roots in the harsh lessons delivered by the Ebola outbreak of 2014–2016, which took 4000 lives.  

Washington Mushobozi, who was isolated in a Marburg Virus Disease treatment facility, says he does not know if he could have coped with missing his mother’s funeral had it not been for the warmth and kindness of the social workers who helped him through his grief.

When 13-year-old Eswatini primary school pupil Tenele Sibandze* (not her real name) overcame her fear of being vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV), she became one of tens of thousands of young girls protected against cervical cancer, the country’s leading cancer among women aged 15 to 49.