Features

In 2019, diseases linked to air pollution killed 1.1-million people in Africa. Could electric motorcycles save lives with cleaner air?

In the small rural town of Chivhu, Zimbabwe, 10-year-old Grace Zvarebwa is training for a pan-African schools chess tournament in Liberia. Chess is an activity normally reserved for the country’s elite schools, but the sport has transformed the lives of rural school girls like Zvarebwa.

Korogocho is one of Nairobi’s most dangerous slums, where rape and robbery are common. Beatrice Nyariara is helping women aged 55 to 90 to fight back.

A psychiatric facility in Freetown has stepped away from its colonial past and removed these ‘shackles’ from their patients.

Anne von Gottberg and Cheryl Cohen are two of South Africa’s foremost scientists. We’ve got them and their colleagues to thank for the country’s world class surveillance of SARS-CoV-2. But this powerful duo are also experts on how to bridge divides — and married.

Scores of women in Argentina could be facing life in prison for what health experts say are obstetric emergencies such as miscarriages.

Somalia is facing a humanitarian crisis. Many people have been displaced due to climate change-induced droughts, and conflict between the army and al-Shabaab has left many regions without food.

A combination of failures by the municipal, provincial and national government left a hospital in the south of Johannesburg without water or electricity for parts of November. Find out what’s behind the chaos.

South Africa’s medicines regulator will announce a decision on the approval of a two-monthly HIV prevention jab within days. If the shot is approved, the health department could start rolling it out on a large scale within nine months — but that depends on the injection’s price.

Rural hospitals and clinics struggle to attract or retain senior healthcare professionals. Health workers who grew up in rural towns can plug the gap as they are more likely to work at facilities in far-flung places than their urban counterparts.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation’s digital campaign Treasure Your Pleasure is using an evidence-based sex-positive approach to educate young Africans about safe sex.

The government is investing in monitoring lead levels in paint, but experts and industry groups say that there’s no plan for dealing with offenders.

Many women in South Africa resorted to sex work in order to survive the COVID recession. Male “blessers” were happy to pay, contributing to the spread of HIV.

The April 2022 floods in KwaZulu-Natal, left Mfundo Shezi without HIV treatment for two weeks. He had no way of getting more because the centre he frequents was closed for two weeks – and his ID book was washed away.

A stockout of the version of testosterone (made by Pfizer) used by state facilities and nonprofits is entering its second year. It’s left transgender men in South Africa, who use the hormone as part of gender-affirming treatment, with few options. Find out what lengths they’re forced to go to get the medicine.

Nokwazi Mbambo watched her life wash away in April, and little has changed 6 months later. Read more on how the climate change induced floods that destroyed her home.