Feature Stories

Brazzaville ‒ Widespread flooding due to unusually heavy rainfall in the Republic of Congo has left more than 336 000 people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. The floods have also damaged health facilities and schools and submerged swaths of farmland.

Yaounde – Nicole, 28, from Bertoua in eastern Cameroon, will never forget that day in 2019 when her doctor at Batouri Catholic Hospital told her she was HIV-positive. She had gone for a medical check-up a few days previously after feeling ill, but HIV was the furthest thing from her mind. She froze, she recalls, wondering how it was possible. But as the shock began to wear off, the doctor informed her of her options, including treatment.

Bujumbura – "I'm diabetic and life here is very hard, very complicated," complains Jean Ndimurirwo, 68, who has lived in the Maramvya camp for displaced people, near Bujumbura in Burundi, since being driven from her home by floodwaters three years ago. 

Bamako – “He punched me, kicked me, hit me with objects and insulted me. I was only 12, married off by my parents to a 55-year-old man who already had two wives. By the time I escaped four years later, I had already suffered two miscarriages,” says the young woman, who today credits World Health Organization (WHO) training for helping her become a “voice for the voiceless” in her community.

Niamey – Mariam, a mother of five living in Kantché, a rural community in Niger's southern Zinder region, remembers the difficult time she went through earlier this year when two of her five children were hospitalized at the same time. “First, it was my nine-year-old son who came home with a strong cough, complaining of a sore throat. He coughed all night and it only got worse. He was finally hospitalized at the Kantché health centre, where his 11-year-old sister also fell ill and, in the end, both were lying there fighting the deadly disease.

Banjul – Two years ago The Gambia carried out an analysis to better tackle the threat of antimicrobial resistance. The analysis, the country’s first of its kind, revealed a rising trend in multi-drug resistant tuberculosis as well as growing pathogen resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics. Babanding Sabally, Director of National Pharmaceutical Services in the Ministry of Health, explains the measures being undertaken to address this public health problem.

Juba ‒ Aboja Malual Chol lives in a transit centre for South Sudanese returnees who have fled the conflict in neighbouring Sudan. Living conditions in the centre near Palouch airport in Melut County in northern South Sudan are tough for its 6000 residents who are awaiting to travel to other parts of the country. 

Accra ‒ The death of his mother six years ago was a rude awakening for Saviour Yevutsey. “What started as a simple cough led to a diagnosis of pneumonia,” he recalls. “After several medicines were administered without any improvement, my mother was referred to another district hospital and later to the teaching hospital for further treatment.” 

Yevutsey spent a fortune on medicines that did not deliver the needed relief to his mother and she died, a memory that still brings him pain. 

Brazzaville – In June 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Emmanuella Selasi Hormenoo, an 18-year-old Ghanian university student, was teetering on the brink of death. “The doctors initially thought that I might have COVID-19, but when they did the tests, they were always negative. During one of the blood transfusions I had to have, I went into cardiac arrest, and slipped into yet another coma.” 

Abuja ‒ When his seven-year-old brother Jubrin was diagnosed with diphtheria in July 2023, Aminu Dayyabu Alharini had never heard of the disease, the latest outbreak of which has claimed more than 500 lives in Nigeria.

Following the diagnosis, Jubrin was immediately transferred from the health facility near their home in Alharini settlement, in Kano State, Nigeria, to a specialist hospital after he suddenly developed a high fever following two days of complaining of a sore throat.