Feature Stories

When microfinance leads to major healing: Bridging agriculture and health in Senegal

Astou Dieng recently joined a savings group cooperative with many other women farmers that is changing her health and the health of her family.

These women in Senegal’s Kaffrine region are doing something novel with their agriculture – they are accessing health care.

By working together to raise and sell crops, they can access new markets with the greater volume that they collectively produce and thus they earn greater income from their fields.

Keeping Ebola response running: A logistician’s take

Djamilou Abdoulkarim, a Central African Republic national, leads a team of World Health Organization (WHO) logisticians supporting the Ebola response in Butembo, a city in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. He took up the job in April 2019, heading a 49-member team. Mr Abdoulkarim first stepped into the logistics and operations world in 2005 and has worked in eight African countries, including his own.

Diabetes is a family affair in Kenya

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.

A Senegalese doctor reflects on what he’s learned from Congolese communities in the...

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.

Fighting polio, one SMS at a time!

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.