Feature Stories

Marthe Apuwa Mbila is a single mother of two children living in Lusengo, a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

12-year-old Christine Kisianan lives in a remote village in Kajiado County, one of the regions in Kenya most affected by the greater Horn of Africa drought, which is in its fourth year.

Tangomo Tansia is a hero. The volunteer health worker delivers precious polio vaccines via canoe to communities in locations far from his home in Kikwit, in southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Reginald Omulo, a farmer in Migori County, Kenya, noticed that the tobacco farming his community practiced was affecting families’ health and well-being.

Macron Chauluka is a community health worker on the front lines of Malawi’s ongoing fight against the wild poliovirus.

60-year-old Raquelina Mazuze is proud of her contribution to the fight against polio as a social mobilizer in her native Mozambique.

Stefina Mocuvele looks on as her grandson Nolege plays happily with his siblings. It’s a far cry from his condition three years ago, when a bout of malaria landed the then six-year-old in hospital, 10 kilometers away from their home in Matuba locality in the Chókwè district of Gaza province, Mozambique.

“As a doctor, there are calls you can’t ignore. When there is a health emergency in your community, it is your responsibility to be part of the solution,” says Dr Emile Rwamasirabo, a urological surgeon who participated in Rwanda’s home-based care initiative for COVID-19.

Adetimi Bayo lives with HIV in a heart of poverty in remote Nigeria. Being remote and being poor can mean out of reach of help and hope. When Nigeria decided to change its AIDS story, it changed the life story of thousands of people like Bayo. 

As much-needed COVID-19 vaccinations reach vulnerable groups at a camp for internally displaced persons in Mozambique’s Niassa Province, local health worker Celio Marcelino is responsible for inputting their data into the country’s digital records system.