Feature Stories

Kigali – When COVID-19 cases and deaths in Rwanda began to spike in early 2022, the health authorities were determined to avoid reliving the experience of prior pandemic waves. Despite the country’s well-coordinated response, hospitals had been overwhelmed with demand and struggling to keep up.

The solution? Operation Save the Neighbour, an initiative to save lives at the community level and reduce the burden on hospitals by integrating doctors into home-based care teams.

Masks. Gloves. Personal protective equipment. Vaccines. These items have become ubiquitous during the COVID-19 pandemic: as protection against the virus itself, but also as medical waste, burdening Africa’s already clogged landfills.

Dubai – As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year, a group of mayors from the African region have committed to improve city governance for health and wellbeing as well as to promote measures for sustainable livelihoods.

Cape Town – Africa has made progress in the fight against tuberculosis (TB) in recent years, however several hurdles are curbing the efforts to end this preventable and curable disease and at the current pace, the global targets to eliminate the disease by 2030 look increasingly elusive. Dr Norbert Ndjeka, Chief Director of TB Control and Management in South Africa’s National Department of health, assesses the challenges and how to accelerate progress.

Kilifi, Kenya – Amid the soft purr of the air conditioner and glinting LED screens, laboratory technicians inside a sprawling facility on the Kenyan coast peer into test tubes and pore through spreadsheets, hard at work to help propel Africa’s efforts to monitor and detect COVID-19 variants and boost pandemic response.

Harare – Nothando Moyo* contemplated giving up treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis “even if it meant I would die,” she admits. The months-long treatment for the drug-resistant strain—which does not respond to the two most effective drugs—entailed daily injections which Moyo, a resident of Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo city, found painful to bear.

Abidjan – When Cote d’Ivoire set to drive up COVID-19 uptake, a three-week mass vaccination campaign in February saw over 2 million people vaccinated, yielding an 8% rise in the number of people fully vaccinated. In a country with less than 20% vaccine coverage, the increase realized in a matter of weeks marks a significant progress.

Nairobi – Although cancer care has improved significantly in many African countries over the past decade, challenges in prevention, detection and treatment services as well as financial hurdles are limiting access to quality and adequate care to millions of patients. Dr Miriam Mutebi, President Elect, African Organization for Research and training in Cancer describes the state of cancer care in Africa and how it can be improved.

Kinshasa – It can be hard to tease apart fact from falsehood amid the distorted, oft-repeated COVID-19 stories. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a network of myth busters is on constant watch, tracking and addressing misinformation thanks to government efforts with support from World Health Organization (WHO) and partner organizations.

Lilongwe – Polio emergency response teams in Malawi are ramping up disease surveillance and deepening investigations after the country detected a case of wild poliovirus—the first of its kind in Africa since 2016. Determining the extent of the risk and searching for any further cases are among the crucial steps for an effective response to halt the virus and protect children from its debilitating impact.