Feature Stories

Challenged by high cholesterol levels and hypertension, and later diabetes, 58-year-old Mola Admassie says his life has significantly changed thanks to the availability of noncommunicable disease services at the health centre 600 metres from his home.

In Guinea, around 30 health centres offer free cervical cancer screening services, giving thousands of women the chance of early detection of the disease, and appropriate treatment.

Hammanskraal resident Tebogo Hlongwane was terrified when she took her three-year-old son, Agisang, to the emergency room at Jubilee District Hospital.

"My husband was against contraceptive," recalls Aïssa*. She recently gave birth to triplets. She has four older children, the youngest barely two years old. "Since the triplets, the financial burden has grown so much that it's been easier to persuade him," she adds.

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.