Feature Stories

As director of a national network of women living with HIV in Zimbabwe, Tendai Westerhof was used to challenging stigma.

A well-known goalkeeper and football coach both in his native Senegal and across West Africa, Lamine Thiare uses his considerable influence to transmit a simple message to young people: “Do not smoke!” he warns them emphatically.

Dr Rirhandzu Norah Mongwe is on the frontlines of Limpopo Province’s COVID-19 vaccination response.

Marthe Apuwa Mbila is a single mother of two children living in Lusengo, a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

12-year-old Christine Kisianan lives in a remote village in Kajiado County, one of the regions in Kenya most affected by the greater Horn of Africa drought, which is in its fourth year.

Tangomo Tansia is a hero. The volunteer health worker delivers precious polio vaccines via canoe to communities in locations far from his home in Kikwit, in southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Stefina Mocuvele looks on as her grandson Nolege plays happily with his siblings. It’s a far cry from his condition three years ago, when a bout of malaria landed the then six-year-old in hospital, 10 kilometers away from their home in Matuba locality in the Chókwè district of Gaza province, Mozambique.

Marlène Seck has brought her infant daughter to the Philippe Maguilene Senghor Health Centre in Yoff, Senegal, to be vaccinated against hepatitis B. The baby cries as she receives her jab, but the tears are worth it: having received her first dose at birth, this is her third dose of the life-saving vaccine.

Dr Francis Manyinza, a senior clinician at the Migori County Referral Hospital in southwestern Kenya, wasn’t surprised when lifelong tobacco farmer Petalis Ouma sought medical care for his chronic cough and ever-worsening chest pains. 

“Blood cannot be manufactured. It is only through donations that it reaches those in need,” says Dominique Linguedze, a voluntary blood donor in Brazzaville, the riverside capital of the Republic of the Congo. “To give my blood is to give a little of myself. It makes me feel like a heroine.”