Feature Stories

As one of the first-ever female urologist surgeons in sub-Saharan Africa, Dr Médina NDoye regularly faces students’ astonishment at her choice to embrace a “male speciality”.

Officials in the Department of Health in Free State Province in South Africa beam with pride when talking about their response to COVID-19. Leadership, innovation, and partnerships, they say, have been key to effectively tackling the pandemic and placed the province among those with the highest vaccination coverage in the country.

A well-known goalkeeper and football coach both in his native Senegal and across West Africa, Lamine Thiare uses his considerable influence to transmit a simple message to young people: “Do not smoke!” he warns them emphatically.

Dr Rirhandzu Norah Mongwe is on the frontlines of Limpopo Province’s COVID-19 vaccination response.

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.