In a small community health clinic in Matotoka township in the northern provinces of Sierra Leone, 25-year-old Kadiatu Bangura cradles her six-month-old baby, Gabriel, with pride. Nurse Aminata Conteh gives Gabriel four droplets of vitamin A, a crucial[...]
The World Health Organization announced the elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in Mali. Though not the first country to eliminate trachoma, this milestone is particularly extraordinary due to the scale of the disease. A 1996 survey found[...]
On a frosty Sunday morning, a group of farmers wearing brightly colored African waist scarves, called lappas, gather together in front of Haja Conteh’s house in the Koinadugu district of Sierra Leone. The all-women farmers group, called “Denkola Two[...]
Cambodia has some of the highest rates of malnutrition in Southeast Asia, and over the past decade, Helen Keller Intl has been driving sweeping improvements in nutrition for mothers, infants, and young children. “Finding better ways to address[...]
Four-year-old Abdoul Aziz Coulibaly was always sick, until his family discovered vitamin A. Abdoul is the youngest of four siblings living with their parents in a small village called Massala in south-central Mali. Though the family has limited financial[...]
When Prince, a new kindergarten student, entered P.S. 152 in Brooklyn, New York, he spoke Creole exclusively. He wasn’t able to identify numbers, letters, or count past four. Our teachers were trying absolutely everything they could. Whitney[...]
In just three years, the ravages of COVID-19 reversed decades of progress in the fight against malnutrition. Compounded by the damaging effects of climate change and armed conflicts, most notably in Ukraine, this crisis fuels increased threats of famine in[...]
My last day in the Helen Keller Intl regional office in Dakar, Senegal, as Vice President for our Africa programs, was July 31, 2013. It was a bittersweet moment: I left behind work I love, a wonderful team, and had great anxiety about leaving Africa, where I[...]
When Helen Keller health workers visited Biaback Guiliagne’s home in a rural Cameroon village, he was surprised at first, but quickly warmed up when he realized the visitors could help relieve some of his pain. For more than 30 years, Biaback had been[...]
Hosne Begum was living in extreme poverty as her husband struggled to support their family of five in remote Bangladesh. Her husband, who was working as a day laborer, was the sole earning member of the five-member family, but his income varied greatly[...]