Clinicians at Partners In Health-supported facilities around the world provided more than 30,000 safe, facility-based childbirths in 2017, according to year-end estimates—and thanks to a growing collaboration, more and more of those safe childbirths are happening in a rural district in Malawi. 

Chimwemwe Chipenge easily remembers the date of the diagnosis that saved her daughter’s life: June 31, 2014.

That was the day Chimwemwe told clinicians with Abwenzi Pa Za Umoyo, as Partners In Health (PIH) is known in Malawi, that her young daughter, Sheila, “was getting smaller, losing loads of weight,” and experiencing dizziness, headaches and frequent urination. The clinicians diagnosed Sheila, now 14, with type 1 diabetes.

Over seven decades in Malawi’s Neno District, Rosemary Mapemba not only has witnessed transformative changes in health care and quality of life, but also has been a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, a Partners In Health patient, a much-loved PIH hospital attendant, and, now, finally, a retiree.

The last of those things is the only one that makes her sad.

Cecilia Kanjadza, 19, scanned the local newspaper in Neno, Malawi, for her name while standing in Partners In Health’s office. It was a moment she wanted to share with PIH staff. Earlier that day she had received a phone call letting her know she had been accepted to college. The newspaper, containing university admissions, would confirm this.