Feature Stories

From eating garlic to gargling with mouthwash, the public space is full of information about how to prevent coronavirus disease. However, much of this is misinformation. To counter this spread of harmful rumours, the World Health Organization (WHO) is organizing workshops in many African countries to inform media professionals on the facts about COVID-19.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has brought key health partners together to rally support for the critical functions needed in country offices to help African Members States achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals.

She waited anxiously for a check-up at a local clinic. Merely a minute after being examined, Gisele* received the result of her cervical cancer test. Up to 8000 women are tested every year, mostly through a community-based screening programme in Madagascar, where cervical cancer is the deadliest type of cancer among women.

Five years ago, news that she had cervical cancer shattered Millicent Kagonga’s world. It upended her marriage, she was spurned by family and friends, and lost a child while undergoing treatment she could barely afford. Her agony seemed endless. But months of painful therapy stopped the spread of the cancer and the thirty-year-old mother of two has now taken on a fresh battle: helping patients and survivors of the disease cope better. We bring her story in her own words.

“Why is Ebola taking so long to end?” a man attending a community meeting outside Butembo town in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) wants to know.

Canada’s Minister for International Development, Honourable Karina Gould, held talks with World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, on ways to strengthen collaboration in the area of health while on a visit this week to the regional office in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.

“From the moment I arrived, my mission was to save lives. I am proud of it,” says Dr Aissatou Bah, a member of the World Health Organization Ebola vaccination team in Beni, a town in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 

How do you deliver nearly three tons of supplies every day to halt Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) conflict-affected north-eastern region? For the World Health Organization (WHO), a 40-strong operations support and logistics team works almost non-stop to speedily dispatch materials across an area four times the size of neighbouring Rwanda.

With the death toll from the world’s worst measles epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) surpassing 6000, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for more funding to stop the outbreak.