Adapted from Dr. Ahmed Ogwell’s opening keynote at the 2nd Africa Primary Health Care Forum, held in Abuja, Nigeria, on July 30, 2026. Across Africa, families are making impossible choices every day. A mother in northern Nigeria delays taking her child to the clinic...
By Wema Kamuzora, Francisca Pratap (CIHEB Tanzania) and Ronald Ng’eno Outside the home of Francis, a traditional healer, a thatched shelter made from wooden poles offers welcome shade. It serves as a waiting area where patients sit, chatting with neighbors or...
Motorcycles began arriving early at Guéyo Health Centre in western Côte d’Ivoire, long before the day’s consultations began. Beneath the veranda, mothers sat quietly waiting for antenatal and postnatal care. Some cradled sleeping babies on their laps,...
I had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the 6th Africa Digital Health Summit in Abuja, where I challenged leaders, innovators, policymakers and partners to reflect on a single number: about 675 million people in Africa still lack access to primary health...
When an outbreak emerges, how quickly it is contained often depends on decisions made years earlier. This was the central lesson I took away from the Global Health Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur. As Country Director for VillageReach in the Democratic Republic of...
When health facilities run out of family planning products, women often bear the greatest consequences. A missed contraceptive injection, unavailable implants, or stockouts of essential commodities can disrupt reproductive health choices and place additional strain on...
The problem In strategic planning conversations with local health departments (LHDs), one theme consistently rises to the top of every SWOT analysis: decreased funding is the biggest threat. In response, many teams do what feels natural. They scan for every possible...
Read the French version of the blog here In the Tabac Congo health area in Tanganyika Province in the DRC, Sumbya Saidi begins his day by visiting different households in his community. As a community health volunteer in a province facing several disease outbreaks,...
Read the French version of the blog here. When a patient with sudden paralysis arrived at a hospital in Siguiri, Guinea, health workers knew they were racing against time. Confirming polio would depend on how quickly a stool sample could travel more than 700...
Read the French version of the blog here. In parts of Côte d’Ivoire, stock-out rates for family planning products have fallen from 90 percent to 10 percent in just one year—a shift that signals what is possible when national policy is matched with strong decentralized...
