Feature Stories

Innovating for health in Niger

Ibrahima Guimba Saidou, Nigerian Minister and Special Advisor to the president, and CEO of the National Agency of Information Society, is spearheading the country’s digital transformation. He speaks about the efforts being made to drive innovation in health.

Fighting fake immunization travel certificates with frontier technologies

At the main bus terminus in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, travellers heading to neighbouring Zambia can be tempted by offers of counterfeit travel vaccination certificates. A thriving black market there sells a fake proof of immunization for between US$ 15–20, says Dr Integrity Mchechesi, who works with a technology firm to combat such forgery.

Benin boosts COVID-19 response with increased testing

Cotonou – Benin’s first COVID-19 case was diagnosed at the Viral Haemorrhagic Fever Laboratory in the capital Cotonou in March 2020. Then it was the country’s sole facility able to test for the virus. At best it could carry out only 300 tests per day.

Testing at the core of Gabon’s COVID-19 battle

With over 60 sample collection sites, a network of laboratories, including a high-capacity one, Gabon has tested nearly a tenth of its 2 million people for COVID-19. Diagnosis has been expanded through mass testing and decentralization beyond the capital city.

Enhancing diagnosis to beat COVID-19 in Senegal

Senegal’s Institut Pasteur was one of only two laboratories in Africa able to test for COVID-19 at the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. The institution’s director, Dr Amadou Sall, speaks about the efforts Senegal has made to strengthen testing as well as the challenges faced.

Benin boosts COVID-19 response with increased testing

Benin’s first COVID-19 case was diagnosed at the Viral Haemorrhagic Fever Laboratory in the capital Cotonou in March 2020. Then it was the country’s sole facility able to test for the virus. At best it could carry out only 300 tests per day.

Battling COVID-19 in communities

Kampala – In a low-income suburb of Makindye, in the Ugandan capital, Hakim Kiggundu has gathered a group of around 30 people from the community near his home, under a tree in a clearing among the houses. In this tight-knit community of narrow mud roads and small wooden houses, people are used to living cheek-by-jowl, but now they are sitting on neatly-spaced white plastic chairs, a few metres apart.

Keeping displaced persons safe from COVID-19 in South Sudan

As the world’s youngest country readied measures to prevent widespread COVID-19 infections, its years of conflict and natural disasters suddenly presented an unparalleled challenge: protecting thousands of displaced persons from COVID-19 within the sites set up over the past decade as refuge.  

Coping with mental health impact of COVID-19

Dan Bukenya felt beleaguered by anguish. He lost sleep most nights and was often testy. He tried to self-medicate to no avail. Only when he agreed to be treated at a hospital did he find relief. “They gave me medicines and I could finally sleep.”