pulitzercenter:

On the maternity ward in Chokwe, Mozambique’s hospital, everyone calls Nilza Munambo “Doctora Nilza.” She treats patients, delivers babies, performs cesarean sections and even hysterectomies. But she’s not an MD—she’s a surgical technician, a health worker who has less training than a doctor, but carries out a range of life saving operations in rural hospitals.

Here, she’s with a woman whose pregnancy is high risk, listening for a fetal heartbeat.

Image and text by Bridget Huber, via Instagram. Mozambique, 2014.
Surgically-treatable conditions cause more death and disability than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. In poor countries, about 1.8 million people die annually from appendicitis, strangulated hernias, birth complications and other afflictions. Bridget Huber first reports from Mozambique, then Uganda, on the need for surgical care and the challenges to providing it.