Feature Stories

Port Louis – Sutrajeet Ghuburrun was 16 when he smoked his first cigarette. Over the next 40 years, the taxi driver from Bel Air, a village in the east of Mauritius, smoked between 15 and 20 cigarettes a day. Although he had long known about the harms of smoking, it was only in 2022, following a coronary angioplasty (a procedure to open narrowed arteries), that he finally quit. He is now more health conscious: the 56-year-old says he has adopted a daily walking regimen and tries to sensitize those around him against this highly destructive habit.

Moroni ‒ In the Comoros, an oral health project supported by World Health Organization (WHO) and involving thousands of children aged 5–12 years, has provided free dental care and consultations to detect any associated heart disease. 

Oral diseases increase the risk of heart disease due to inflammation of the gums, as bacteria in the mouth can spread through blood vessels and cause serious infections such as endocarditis, or cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis and cardiac arrest.

Bujumbura – “It’s unacceptable that in 2024, children are still born with HIV,” says Novela Irakoze, a woman living who with HIV and advocate for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. “I was born with HIV and my goal is to protect children from experiencing what I did.”

Novela is part of a group called Mentor Mothers, which supports pregnant women living with HIV in receiving treatment to protect their babies from HIV.

Niamey ‒ In Niger, efforts are underway to mainstream screening for gynaecological cancers into primary health care services thanks to the WHO PEN approach, a WHO programme that aims to integrate the management of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) into basic health care. This initiative, in its pilot phase, is being carried out in Mayahi District, Maradi Region, in the centre south of the country.

Maroua – “At first, I felt itchy and scratched my body all the time, then my foot started to swell,” says Jacob, a 56-year-old farmer from Goudour in the far north region of Cameroon. “I was ashamed to go out in public. I covered my foot and everyone looked at me strangely. I couldn't even work normally anymore."

Lusaka ‒ One evening, Lusaka resident Samuel Zyambo rapidly fell into a disturbing, dreamlike state of unconsciousness. He was unaware that when he woke up the following day, he was in a cholera treatment centre fighting for his life, with no recollection of anything that had taken place in the previous 12 hours.

Mbabane – When Simangele Dlamini was diagnosed with a pre-cancerous cervical lesion, all the 50-year-old mother from Mankayane in Eswatini could think about was the welfare of her children. “My husband died in 2017 and I didn’t know who would raise them if I died of cancer,” she recalls.

Instead, Dlamini benefited from a multi-pronged strategy by the Government of Eswatini to curb cancers affecting women. Cervical cancer incidence in the country, at 84.5 per 100 000 women, is the highest in the world and compounded by the country’s high HIV burden. 

Kinshasa ‒ In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 47.9% of children aged below five years suffer from chronic malnutrition and 81.1% of those aged between 6 to 23 months do not get adequate nutrition, integrating appropriate nutrition into disease control is crucial to strengthening the country's response to health crises.

Abuja ‒ It all began with a mild stomach ache, something seven-year-old Auwali Abubakar’s parents initially dismissed as a minor issue. 

But as the days passed, the pain intensified and Auwali’s stomach began to swell. He experienced leg pain which affected his ability to walk, became lethargic and lost his appetite.   

“I felt helpless as I watched my son suffer. Nobody knew what type of disease it was and no one could help him,” says his father Mallam Abubakar, from Zamfara State, in northwestern Nigeria.