Feature Stories

In the early months of 2023, village chief Dyson Chamizi and his brother were taken ill at Nathenje Health Centre, a facility near their home some 40 kilometres from Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. Both had cholera, which is extremely virulent, but easily treatable.

In his wheelchair, armed with a loudhailer, community volunteer Abednego Afreh goes from door to door in his neighbourhood, quelling the fears of his fellow Ghanaians as he urges them to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

While Ghanaian mother Charity Kesewaa Damoah has nursed her eight-year-old son through several debilitating bouts of malaria, his 14-month-old brother, John, is living proof of the benefits of the first malaria vaccine recommended to prevent the disease in children, she believes.

Africa’s Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest freshwater lake and its largest tropical lake. This awe-inspiring ecosystem supports a stunning variety of bird, aquatic and animal species. Unfortunately, the same ecosystem is also an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes that carry malaria.

In April 2019, Gilimbeta took her daughter Lusitana to a rural health facility on the outskirts of Lilongwe, Malawi, for vaccination. At the time, she did not realize that her infant daughter was being written into history:  the 5-month-old was the first child to receive the world’s first malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01 or RTS,S) as part of the WHO-coordinated Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme.

Dr Cremildo Rajabo has new confidence entering the cholera treatment centre in Lichinga district in northern Mozambique, one of the areas hardest-hit by the outbreak.

The ongoing Marburg virus disease outbreaks in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania are the latest of several zoonotic diseases reported in the African region.

How can numbers save lives? In three malaria-prone districts in central Mali, regular recording of cases is helping local health officials keep track of infection trends, but more importantly, they can now trigger an emergency response when the infection threshold is crossed and helping to curb potential large outbreaks.

As a general practitioner for over a decade, Dr Gift Sten Chinomba has treated many cholera patients.

Twenty years ago, Thongbotho Mphoyakgosi, wanted to be a social worker. “But fate had me here,” she laughs, as she gestures to her surroundings at the National Health Laboratory, in Botswana’s capital city, Gaborone.