Feature Stories

Leaning against the wall in a corridor at the University Hospital Centre in Abeche, a town around 900 km east of the Chadian capital N'Djamena, Dr Sassil Dare takes a few minutes to catch his breath. It is 3pm and he has already completed three surgeries.

For four months Stella Fikiri underwent a variety of tests at several private health care institutions, before finally being diagnosed with diabetes at the Magomeni Public Health Facility in Kinondoni, a district in Tanzania’s commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

When Jean Paul Nduwumwe decided to have a hepatitis test while accompanying his pregnant wife on a clinic visit, he had no idea that following a positive result and three months of treatment his health and well-being would be restored, and he would feel “reborn”.

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.

With its mountainous terrain and use of donkeys and horses as primary modes of transport, Berea Hospital nurse Sello Ramakanate says the consequent high incidence of traumatic brain injuries in Lesotho is compounded by limited critical care, pushing up deaths rates.

Nadja* was planning her wedding two years ago when she learned that she was HIV-positive. Eight months after the wedding, she fell pregnant. "I feared for the baby ... he was still at risk of being born HIV-positive. I became more and more worried,” she recalls.

Shakira Namutebi, 28, an anti-tobacco advocate in Uganda, was forced to face up to the impact of smoking on her health when her damaged lungs could not supply the necessary oxygen she needed after undergoing surgery in 2020. She needed a ventilator, a machine to help her breathe. The eldest of 10 children, she stopped smoking a year later and committed to encouraging others to follow suit.

Attending a health centre was an “unattainable luxury” after the Batsirai and Emnati cyclones hit Madagascar’s south-eastern Vatovavy region in February 2022, cutting off any access to care for Toky Rabemaharo and his community.

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.