Observer Exclusive - plea to Sierra Leone's prodigy athlete

In these exclusive interviews for the Observer, I presented the story behind the case of missing marathon runner Mamie Konneh Lahun and highlighted the plight of Sierra Leonean athletes.

A week after Lahun disappeared following the London Marathon, I spoke to her manager and co-runner Idrissa Kargbo about the events leading up to the race and why she might have absconded.

Their comments revealed the struggle athletes face in a country still recovering from a horrific civil war, and the commitment and talent they have which, if nurtured, could inspire a nation.

Read the full article on the Observer website.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Could unemployed youth solve the health care worker crisis?

Image
According to the  World Health Organization ,  40 million  new health and social care jobs must be created globally by 2030 to meet Sustainable Development Goal 3 of universal health coverage. At the same time, global youth unemployment reached 71 million in 2016, according to  International Labour Organization  data. Could the two problems be used to solve each other? Director of the Health Workforce Department at the WHO Jim Campbell believes they could. He says it’s time to “join the dots” between the shortage of health care workers and young unemployed people. Campbell told Devex that development practitioners need to approach the solution in a non-traditional way, and create new training models for the next cohort of skilled health professionals. It is already happening in some countries, he says. Afghanistan and Ethiopia have both created accelerated training programs to help get more young people into health care. And whil...
Read more

Devex - Criticism over Ebola response 'far from reality' — WHO official

Image
"More than a year has passed since the first human contracted the deadly Ebola virus that led to an unprecedented outbreak in West Africa. So-called patient zero, a two-year-old in the remote Guinean village of Meliandou, became ill on Dec. 26, 2013, and died two days later. The  World Health Organization , however, did not publish any official notification of Ebola on its website until March 25 of this year. Since then, WHO, global aid organisations and governments from around the world have battled to halt the disease. As the start of 2015 draws nearer, the epidemic is still raging and has now topped 19,340 reported cases resulting in 7,518 deaths, according to the latest figures released Monday by the U.N. health agency. Devex caught up with Dr. Maria Neira, director of WHO’s Public Health and Environment Department, which focuses on preventative measures and the root causes of diseases, to know more about how the Ebola epidemic has affected her work, as well as...
Read more

Former DfID political adviser on UK aid direction and his new role at Plan International UK

Image
Before our interview, Simon Bishop — recently appointed director of policy and programs at  Plan International U.K.  — insists that the topic of his previous employer is off-limits. As a special political adviser to the United Kingdom’s former Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening, Bishop spent two and a half years providing political, policy and media advice that shaped the direction of the government’s development strategy. Although some of the   controversial policies  announced by the  Department for International Development  since Greening and Bishop left in July last year may have been gestating while he was in the post, Bishop refuses to comment on them. “Mischievous journalists can turn that into nice headlines,” he told Devex. “I've got to be careful”… --> Read the full story on Devex.com .
Read more