There is a case from Morissanda Kouyate’s career that stays with him.
In 1983, Kouyate, then 32, was working at a village hospital in Guinea when 12-year-old twins, Hassantou and Housseynatou, were brought in. Through wails, their relatives told him that earlier that day, the girls had been taken into the bush to be submitted to genital mutilation.
They were barely conscious and bleeding heavily.
For the next 48 hours, Kouyate and his colleagues tried to save them; his wife came and donated blood. The girls died.
“We did everything,” he said. “I was very sad, because at that time, I had my two