Augusta S. Lafalay Archives

A Government Assessment Shows Liberia Is 69 Percent Ready for Ebola. Frontline Health Workers Say the Missing 31 Percent Matters

By Augusta S. Lafalay, senior reporter with New Narratives Summary: • A nationwide Ebola preparedness assessment found Liberia 69 percent ready overall, while logistics scored only 47 percent, leaving major gaps in equipment, supplies, isolation facilities and training. • Frontline health workers say those logistics gaps can mean the difference between safely isolating a suspected…

Augusta S. Lafalay
Frontpage Africa

800,000 Liberians Likely Have Kidney Disease. Most Won’t Survive It

By Augusta S. Lafalay, senior reporter with New Narratives Summary: In 2021 Anthony Gbeh had never heard the word “dialysis”. Today, it has become the center of his life. The 45-year-old goes to the country’s only dialysis center here at John F. Kennedy hospital, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, spending about 12 hours a week…

Augusta S. Lafalay
Frontpage Africa

Thousands of Liberian Women Suffer a Preventable Birth Injury While Care Lags Decades Behind

Thousands of Liberian women suffer silently from obstetric fistula, a preventable childbirth injury that leaves them leaking urine or feces for years, often in isolation, because maternal health care in Liberia lags decades behind. Despite the fact that 80% of cases could be prevented with timely medical care, limited facilities, poor referral systems, and lack…

Augusta Lafalay
Video

Thousands of Liberian Women Suffer a Preventable Birth Injury While Care Lags Decades Behind

By Augusta S. Lafalay with New Narratives Summary: For fourteen years, S. said she woke up every morning to wet and smelly sheets. She had no name for what was wrong with her. She had no doctor to visit, no clinic that could help. All she had was shame — and silence. It started with…

Augusta S. Lafalay
Frontpage Africa

Experts Warn Digital Divide is Crushing a Generation’s Dreams and Locking the Country in Poverty

By Augusta S. Lafalay with New Narratives Summary: BARNESVILLE ESTATE, Montserrado County— Sarah Sackor and her classmates were excited the day in September when a computer teacher told their 12th-grade class early that they would finally begin internet lessons. For years, “computer class” had been mostly theory — copying notes from textbooks. Most students at…

Augusta S, Lafalay
Frontpage Africa

‘I Smile in Public and Die Inside’; New Mothers Suffer Alone With A Condition That Devastates Families

Many new mothers in Liberia are silently suffering from a debilitating postpartum condition that devastates families, even as they smile in public and struggle alone in private. Augusta Lafalay reports in this social media Video. To read more about this story click this link: Liberia: ‘I Smile in Public and Die Inside’; New Mothers Suffer…

Augusta Lafalay
Video