1. WHO Africa

Feature Stories

Meet team WHO: Dr Fiona Braka, Team Lead, Emergency Operations

A public health professional with an MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr Fiona Braka has worked for World Health Organization (WHO) for the past 18 years supporting countries, including her native Uganda, Ethiopia and Nigeria, to build capacity to deliver vaccines. She is now bringing her vast experience in polio eradication and broader immunization to support the continent’s fight against disease outbreak emergencies and humanitarian crises.
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Home-based care boosts Nigeria’s COVID-19 fight

Lagos – When Zainab Olowoyo got COVID-19, she was one of thousands of people residing in the populous Lagos State whose case was not severe enough for her to be sent to the nearest isolation unit. Instead, Olowoyo received hospital-level care in her own home through a Home-Based Care programme implemented by the state government in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). She had a smooth recovery and was cleared of the virus within 10 days.
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Leveraging lessons from Africa’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout

From exemplary mass-vaccination stations in Angola, to complex cold-chain logistics in Rwanda and model communications to boost trust in vaccines in Ghana, the World Health Organization (WHO) is documenting key lessons emerging from Africa’s rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

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Meet team WHO: Dr Messeret Shibeshi, Immunization Officer

With over 20 years of experience in mass immunization drives and rapid-response planning across Africa, World Health Organization (WHO) Immunization Officer Dr Messeret Shibeshi is aiding 20 East and Southern African countries in rolling out life-saving COVID-19 vaccines.
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Vaccination boosts Sierra Leone’s Ebola prevention

While the 2014–2016 deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa devastated lives and wrecked health services, it also offered pivotal lessons in outbreak control by stoking swift and more effective response as well as driving progress in vaccines and therapeutics.
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Guinea’s Minister of Health explains what it took to end Ebola

The Ebola outbreak that erupted in Guinea in early 2021 was declared over on 19 June, just four months after the first cases were confirmed in a rural community in the south of the country. Banking on the lessons learned from the deadly 2014–2016 outbreak as well as a growing national expertise, a prompt response was mounted, helping to curb widespread infection. Minister of Health Honourable Dr Rémy Lamah explains what it took to halt the virus and the challenges met.
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Leaving a legacy after Ebola in Guinea

It is a quiet morning at an Ebola treatment centre in the outskirts of N’zerekore, a town in the south-east of Guinea. The centre’s triage and reception areas are all empty, and medical staff are relaxed and jovial as they tend to a small handful of patients or catch up on some administrative tasks in the office.
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Giving 110%: Eswatini’s early rollout of COVID-19 vaccines 

“I didn’t think that I could get COVID out here in my village,” says Linda Simelane at her home in Sibebe in rural Eswatini.

“I stay away from people, I stay alone, but it happened that I started getting flu symptoms.” 

At the peak of Africa’s first wave of infections in mid-2020, Ms Simelane’s son took her to get tested for COVID-19, but as she waited for her results at home, her condition rapidly deteriorated.

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