Feature Stories

Dar es Salam – “I remember hearing the news that I was infected with Marburg like it happened yesterday. It was one of the most challenging periods for me,” recalls Dr Mahona Jumanne Ndulu, who works at Bukoba Regional Referral Hospital in Tanzania’s Kagera region in the north. 

A year since the Marburg Virus Disease (Marburg) outbreak in Tanzania was declared over in June 2023, memories of the disease, which was controlled in a record 90 days, remain fresh in the minds of survivors.

Nouakchott – Ifrah, 36, started smoking at just 13 years of age and never thought he would ever quit. Smoking was common in his home neighbourhood of Cansado in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, and he simply followed by example. “For me, smoking meant being trendy and mature. But that was just an illusion,” he says.

Pretoria ‒ Tobacco consumption in Africa presents complex public health, economic and environmental challenges and requires a multisectoral approach to prevention and control. Professor Lekan Ayo-Yusuf of the Africa Centre for Tobacco Industry Monitoring and Policy Research (ATIM) at the University of Pretoria discusses tobacco control measures in Africa. 

Lilongwe ‒ Shombe Banda from Kasungu District in Central Malawi was a tobacco farmer for 35 years. He recently switched to growing other crops, such as soya beans, groundnuts and maize. His motivation to change was mostly economic, he says. 

Nanoro, Burkina Faso – Sister Marie Blanche Kambire has more than 20 years of experience as a nurse. She lives in Nanoro, a rural area 85 kilometres west of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital. A Catholic nun, she has dedicated her life to serving others, particularly the children she has been caring for over the past 12 years at the Nanoro Medical Centre, where she heads the paediatric unit.

Unconditional commitment 

Maputo – Nine-year-old Ana Sitoe and Isabel Cossa*, learners at Guava Primary School in Marracuene, Maputo, have both received their first vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) thanks to an immunization drive targeting young girls.

"I was afraid of the needle, but I knew that the vaccine was good for protecting our health against this disease, so that we can play, study, grow up and fulfil our dreams in the future," Ana says.

Victoria ‒ Matteo Pragassen is almost a year old and his mother, Diane Uranie, has brought him to the Beau Vallon health centre in Victoria, Seychelles' capital, for his measles-mumps-rubella vaccination. Shortly after arrival, nurse Brigitte Mathiot deftly administers the shot, and it is all over. 

Accra – Charity Damoah, 36, lost count of the number of times she was admitted to hospital with malaria while growing up in Sunyani, in Ghana’s Bono region. But things are different now for her two-year-old son John.

Unlike the many other Ghanaians who had lived daily with the threat of the disease, he has never had malaria.

Lilongwe ‒ Although Malawi continues to record only sporadic cholera cases, with just an average of 10 cases a week as of January 2024 compared with close to 700 cases per week at the peak of the outbreak in January 2023 – infection control measures are being applied rigorously to further curb the disease, save lives and avert a flare-out.