Tiemany Diarra’s Story

Bamako, Mali – May, 2008

Kalifa Patrice Dembele, age 3, lies in her hospital bed on a Friday morning in Bamako, Mali while her mother, Tiemany Diarra, looks on. Kalifa began to feel unwell about five days before this picture was taken. Tiemany took her to the closest district clinic on the outskirts of Bamako with a fever on Monday. The doctor thought she might have a mild bug and sent her home but when Kalifa didn’t improve, and her breathing worsened, she and her mother returned to the clinic on Wednesday. Kalifa had deteriorated so much that the doctor had her immediately evacuated to the country’s only pediatric facility, the Gabriel Toure’ hospital, where pneumococcal pneumonia and meningitis were diagnosed and aggressive treatment was begun.

Unfortunately, this was not Tiemany’s first experience with pneumococcal disease. Six months prior, her only other child, six-year old Clarice, began to suffer convulsions and ultimately passed away as a result of pneumococcal meningitis in this same hospital room. The young doctor treating Kalifa, Dr. Mamadou Baba Sylla, says of his own child “Even if my daughter has a little fever, I’m afraid… My first thought is always pneumococcus… When I go to the lab to get results for a child, if I see that it is Streptococcus pneumoniae, the first thing I think is that this child is going to die”. Despite the doctors’ best efforts and the best available treatment, Kalifa, like her sister, lost her battle with the pneumococcus the day after this photo was taken and Teimany Diarra lost her only living child.