Impact
Stories from the field
Patients, clinicians, students, and communities tell the stories that numbers can't.
The day Aïssatou ran again
At nine years old, she had stopped climbing stairs. A four-hour operation at a teaching hospital gave her back the playground — and her mother her sleep.
Coming home
After twenty-two years as a cardiologist in London, Dr. Kofi Mensah came back to the hospital where his mother had once been a cleaner. He came back to lead its cardiac unit.
The four o'clock walk
Every morning before sunrise, Nurse Esther carries a cooler box eight kilometres along a red-earth road. Inside it are vaccines for children who would otherwise never meet a nurse.
Nine hundred and eighty grams
Amara weighed less than a bag of sugar when she was born. Her mother counted her breaths for fifty-six nights. On the fifty-seventh, Amara came home.
The first in her family
Marie-Claire was the first person in her village to finish secondary school. With a reimbursed tuition, she became the first to become a nurse.
Grandmother sees again
For six years, Madame Adjoua had not seen her grandson's face. The operation took fourteen minutes. She has not stopped looking at him since.