The Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital is made up of about half a dozen long, low buildings with porticoes, built high on one of Freetown’s rolling hills. The grounds are lush and green. One of the Partners In Health staff has a background in landscaping, and as the buildings have been Read more…
By Mark Brender, National Director, Partners In Health Canada, and Onome Ako, Executive Director, Amref Health Africa in Canada Canadian advocates for universal health coverage in the 1960s underpinned their fight with rights-based arguments. Former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas, voted the greatest Canadian in a 2004 CBC poll, insisted that health Read more…
On most days, Dalitso Mkango is busy selling her vegetables in the market in the central village of Neno District, Malawi. And if she’s not selling her produce, then she’s at home working in her gardens. Rumour has it that she has some of the best produce around—likely because of Read more…
The world’s latest Ebola outbreak now has spread for nearly a year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the virus has infected more than 2,500 people and killed nearly 1,700. PIH has sent two of our top Ebola clinicians to work with partners in the conflict-torn region to Read more…
Leaning over the pregnant patient before her, Regina Korgbendeh touched the woman’s looming stomach and spoke softly in Kono, a dialect common in eastern Sierra Leone: “Thank you for this child.” Blessing an unborn baby is a custom strictly followed in communities throughout Kono District. Once the prayer was complete, Read more…
When Françoise Umutesi looks at her 1-year-old grandson, Blessing, she has the smile of someone who once thought she’d never have the chance to meet him. Umutesi, 45, is a breast cancer survivor. She had a mastectomy in 2012, at Butaro District Hospital in northern Rwanda. She was one of Read more…
Mondeh Mansaray sketches the form of his favourite football player with swift, diligent movements of his pencil. Nothing can break his focus as he sits curled-up on a wooden stool and pores over the white page in front of him. For Mondeh, 14, Saturday morning means one thing: no school. Read more…
As Partners In Health continues relief efforts in southern Malawi following devastating downpours earlier this year, personal stories are emerging that show not only the flooding’s severe impact on families and communities, but also the vital support that, in weeks since, has provided hope, helped people rebuild their homes, and Read more…
Three-month-old Omar slept peacefully in a hammock in the shade while his mother, Olga Veronica Roblero, laid out beans to dry in the sun nearby. They were at the family’s home in the rural Sierra Madre region of Chiapas, Mexico, where Roblero and her husband make a subsistence living growing Read more…
Mariama Kamara felt suddenly unwell upon coming home to her daughter and grandson one evening in August 2016. After walking the familiar dusty road home from the diamond mine where the 43-year-old worked in Sierra Leone’s Kono District, she sat down in the kitchen with a worsening headache and nausea. Read more…