Awa Diba went into labor just twenty four hours before health workers across Senegal were scheduled to walk out on strike. As hospitals scrambled to limit services to emergency care, Diba found herself trapped in a harrowing scene of institutional decay. Her labor lasted a full day spent in a crowded room with four other women, beneath cracked ceilings and silent fans in stifling heat. Amidst intermittent electricity and the sounds of terrified patients crying out, she witnessed a level of distress that shocked her, where pleas for help were sometimes met with orders to be quiet.
The irony of Diba’s experience is that she entered the hospital as a trainee nurse and left as a mother. Having pivoted from a degree in digital communication due to staggering youth unemployment rates, she sought stability in nursing. However, her time delivering her daughter, Myriam, served as a brutal introduction to the systemic failures of the very profession she joined. While thousands of doctors are registered nationally, practitioners like Dr Marc Manga argue that raw numbers are meaningless without basic equipment or accessible diagnostics for those living far beyond the capital city of Dakar.
This crisis reached a breaking point in mid September when doctors and pharmacists launched strikes demanding better pay, improved pensions, and urgent investment in rural facilities. These professionals claim their requests have been ignored since 2023, leaving them to operate in an environment defined by waiting. Patients wait for specialists, doctors wait for tools, and unions wait for government promises that rarely materialize into action.
The struggle is compounded by a paradoxical economic reality. Although Senegal is seeing growth through new oil and gas production, it remains shackled by massive public sector debt that recently surged after government audits revealed previously undisclosed liabilities. This financial stranglehold leaves President Bassirou Diomaye Faye fighting for breathing room on the global stage, arguing that an inequitable international debt architecture prevents him from funding essential services like healthcare. With foreign aid cuts further squeezing programs for malaria and reproductive health, the state finds itself wealthier in resources but poorer in liquidity.
For Awa Diba, these macroeconomic battles translate into faces filled with terror in hospital hallways. Now aspiring to specialize in haematology to treat cancer and sickle cell disease, she observes that many patients avoid public hospitals until their illnesses reach terminal stages because they simply cannot afford the costs associated with consultations and medicine. By naming her daughter Myriam after a figure known for enduring solitary pain during childbirth, Diba acknowledges the hardship of her journey while committing herself to fixing a broken system so that future generations do not have to suffer through it.
