BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) — People stand when Dr. Matshidiso Moeti enters a room at the World Health Organization’s Africa headquarters in the Republic of Congo, and they listen intently to what she says.
Small in stature and big in presence, Moeti is the first woman to lead WHO’s regional Africa office, the capstone of her trailblazing career in which she has overcome discrimination in apartheid, South Africa, to become one of the world’s top health administrators.
As WHO Africa chief, Moeti initiates emergency responses to health crises in 47 of the continent’s 54 countries and recommends policies to strengthen their health care systems.
Since her appointment in 2015, Moeti has grappled with the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak in West Africa. She also has had to handle lingering criticism of WHO’s spending and hiring in Africa as it also deals with allegations of sexual assault by contractors during Congo’s Ebola crisis.
From 2020, the start of her second term, Moeti has faced her toughest professional and personal challenge: helping Africa respond to the coronavirus pandemic as the continent trails the rest of the world in testing and vaccination efforts. She has become one of the world’s most compelling voices urging better consideration of Africa’s people — especially women, who’ve in many ways been hit hardest by COVID. Her identity as an African woman has been both a strength and an obstacle on a continent where much of society is still dominated by patriarchal systems.
“I’m certainly doing my best to be there not only as a technician and a manager and a leader but also very much as a woman from the region, from the continent,” Moeti, 67, told The Associated Press during a recent visit to WHO Africa headquarters in the Republic of Congo. “I feel very privileged.
“At the same time …I’m looking forward to the day when it will no longer be notable that there’s a woman
leading an organization — when it will have become part of the norm.”
Moeti has made strides within WHO Africa to follow through on her word — starting a leadership program that has helped promote more women by ensuring that female applicants for jobs are taken as seriously as men.
Improved gender parity is evident at WHO Africa, where nearly equal numbers of men and women walk around the sprawling campus, about a 20-minute drive outside Brazzaville along the Congo River. In her time in office, Moeti said, she is proud to have shifted the ratio of men to women — now, four female directors and four male directors flank her in the grand conference room where meetings and Zoom calls are held. Prior, it was three women in the presence of six men.
One of the women at the table is Dr. Mary Stephens who says that seeing Moeti as regional director means a lot to her and others in Africa, where women historically and traditionally have had to take a back seat: “It gives us hope and an indication that it can happen for any woman on the continent.”
Emergency work like hers, Stephens said, “adds another layer of challenge to it for a woman, because you’re deployed to difficult situations, and it is perceived to be a job that not all women can do. Well, we have been doing this work. I’ve been doing it for almost (10) years now, and we are progressing.”
In Africa, women have suffered disproportionately during the pandemic — with lower vaccine rates, economic turmoil, rising pregnancies, other healthcare issues, increases in domestic and gender-based violence — and Moeti has made addressing that inequality a cornerstone of her work.
“Very often I’m thinking about those people who are most frequently disadvantaged and missed by the health services …the kind of adolescent girl, that person who is transitioning from being a child taken care of by the child health services to being a woman of reproductive age with all the vulnerabilities that, that implies in Africa,” Moeti said.
She thinks of women she knows and sees. The woman who braids her hair, who lost work because of the lockdown and is scared of the vaccine. An elderly woman who must carry her load of food up and down steep hills. Women selling produce at marketplaces who were forced to close their stalls.
The way out of the pandemic is to reach these women with awareness campaigns and economic aid, she said.
To this end, Moeti tries to get out into the field monthly. She’s frequently joined by government officials and journalists, and the convoy can attract a crowd — as with a recent trip to the dense Ouenze neighborhood of Brazzaville. Women and men jostled to get a glimpse of their health minister, the mayor, and Moeti, at a small yard outside a health center.
In a colorful tailored top and WHO vest, Moeti listened with the others to 25-year-old biochemistry student Arnie Mayeyenda explain COVID-19, prevention methods, and vaccination efforts to residents. Moeti leaned over to listen to a translator as the student spoke — nodding in encouragement.
“Many people aren’t aware of the presence of the virus, so we need to let them know about it and how to avoid getting it,” Mayeyenda said, explaining how Africa still lags behind other parts of the world.
Later, Mayeyenda said Moeti and her work inspire her as Africa tries to catch up, and she recommended that the leader also visit universities to speak and show young women that a future in science is possible for them, too.
The pandemic has also worsened existing gender inequities in key spheres, according to WHO Africa. Women constitute 70% of the health and social workers in Africa and are on the frontlines of COVID-19 response, yet 85% of national task forces are led by men, according to the U.N.
This story is part of a yearlong series on how the pandemic is impacting women in Africa, most acutely in the least developed countries. The Associated Press series is funded by the European Journalism Centre’s European Development Journalism Grants program, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The AP is responsible for all content.
