Josphat, a health worker based in Nairobi, needed a skin graft on his leg in 2013. But then, what is typically a common procedure nowadays became a medical nightmare.
The courtyard of the Musuniene Health Centre, normally quiet, rings with the sounds of adolescents running, playing and chatting in the open space, undaunted by the intense heat.
Alara Amin was 4 years old when she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. In the five years since, she has become actively involved in managing her condition, which is also a family and school affair. Even her 4-year-old brother understands that she must have insulin injections three times a day.
Dr Elhadji Mamadou Mbaye, from the West African country of Senegal, leads the Risk Communications and Community Engagement team for the World Health Organization’s Ebola outbreak response in Butembo in the North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A graduate in political science, he went on to complete a PhD in health policies related to AIDS and migration before heading up the West African Task Force for Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases and the Social Science and Global Health Research Unit for the Government of Senegal.
Health workers and community volunteers in remote and security-compromised areas across 10 African countries now rely on an SMS-based application to ferret out any possible poliovirus hiding in their midst.
Medical biologist Espérance Tshiwedi was in a meeting back in July when her phone rang insistently. “What is it?” she snapped to the lab technician on duty. He asked to speak with her in the lab – immediately.
Marie Claire Lamah is a doctor from the West Africa country of Guinea, whose people experienced a serious Ebola epidemic in 2014–2016. Many doctors and epidemiologists from Guinea have offered their skills and experience, through World Health Organization (WHO) teams, to other nations battling outbreaks of contagious disease.
In the Ebola epidemiological zones in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, health care workers must stay alert, vigilant and careful. An Ebola infection could find them before they realize it is circulating within a patient who just came for treatment. Of the 162 health workers infected since the start of this tenth outbreak in August 2018, 65 died; 63%, or 102 of them, were nurses.
Aluak Bol arrived at the health facility anxious about the health of her 18-month-old daughter, Apen Magot Mabeny. She had a fever, excessive mouth salivation and poor appetite. She cried horribly when urinating, which was reddened.
Twana Bhembe witnessed the devastating effects of tuberculosis (TB) when her sister died from the disease in 2011. That was before she and her husband were each diagnosed with the disease, a year apart.
