Feature Stories

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.

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.  

It was only during a routine medical examination for a job opportunity abroad that Emmanuel Lutamaguzi, 28, founder of the Hepatitis Aid Organization in Uganda, discovered he was infected with Hepatitis B. His wife and baby boy both tested negative and received a vaccine to prevent them from contracting the disease.

Lying in a hospital bed, Idriss Yahya Annour, who recently fled the conflict in Sudan to neighbouring Chad, recalls how the vehicle they were escaping in came under fire in an attack that left him with a bullet wound and a fractured femur.

After the Batsirai and Emnati cyclones hit Madagascar’s south-eastern Vatovavy region in February 2022, Toky Rabemaharo suddenly found himself and his community cut off from basic health services. “Being able to attend a health centre was an unattainable luxury for us,” he recalls.

Mary Ukuach Deng, 34, recalls the morning when she and her three young children were awoken by a volley of gunfire in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. “I was so scared because of the loud sound of guns that engulfed our neighborhood; we could see soldiers running all over,” Deng says.

A terrible car accident in late 2022 in Ghana’s southern Akuse town left Nana Serwaa Brakatuo in a critical condition. With a ruptured liver and blood clots in the lungs, doctors said her chances of survival were bleak, without timely and sufficient blood transfusion needed for her surgery. But thanks to blood donations from anonymous donors, family and friends, doctors were able to save her life.