Feature Stories

Lichinga, Mozambique – It is the last day of polio vaccination campaign in Niassa, a province in northern Mozambique, and a mobile vaccination team headed by health worker Celina Miguel is going house-to-house in a small village.

The team has just come up against a refusal.

“They want to give my child an illness, an illness to kill her!” says the young mother who turned down the Oral Polio Vaccine for her daughter.

Miguel tries to speak to the parent, but she is not hopeful, “I’m not from this area so I think she doesn’t trust me,” she says.

Accra – Six-month-old Sefadzi Akorli from Adaklu in Ghana’s Volta Region is among millions of children receiving the vaccine against polio variant type 2 this month. 

Kafui, Sefadzi´s mother, knows the value of vaccines and is happy her son is now protected against polio: “Vaccination has really helped our children to remain healthy, especially those of us who live far away from the health care. I am very happy you located us here to vaccinate our child against polio,” she says. 

Kampala – Poor access to mental health care in many African countries due to low government investment is one of the major hurdles to prevention and care services. On average African governments allocate less than 50 US cents per capita to mental health, well below the recommended US$ 2 per capita for low-income countries. Christina Ntulo, Country Director of StrongMinds Uganda – an organization working for better access to mental health care – discusses the implications of underinvestment and how to overcome the challenges.