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The Animal Named Burnout

  “I’m just feeling numb, I can’t even respond to this email,” thinks Sekai [1] , as she slowly leaves the Microsoft Teams meeting. She had presented a report which raised a lot of discussion. She opens her Outlook inbox to find mail from her supervisor with a new assignment required at close of business. That is in 45 minutes! Sekai (42) is a coordinator of one of the districts in a new HIV project. She has always been high-performing, task oriented and an effective leader. But recently she has noticed that she has been losing energy and motivation. She thinks maybe she is not getting enough sleep, but she can never seem to get renewed after a night’s sleep. She is also starting to feel that nothing she does makes any difference or is appreciated. Could Sekai be experiencing burnout? If so, what steps can she take to manage it and prevent it from happening again? Is a happy, productive work-life possible for the typical worker in the development industry? I can tell you now, that the
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He Rose By Lifting Others – My Tribute to the Late Dr Christopher Zishiri

  On the evening of 14 August 2021, we received the news that our boss was gone forever. Dr Christopher Zishiri, affectionately known as CZ, had died in his residence after a short week of COVID-19-related complications. What we didn’t know, was that we were not going to go through normal grief. It would be a grief confused with figuring out that work family is actually family. That emails and zoom meetings could continually trigger tears for weeks to come. It would be a grief that left you unmotivated to touch your work because who then would revert with “Well done Chiremba!” It was going to leave us scattered and sober and sad.   My interest in TB work began the day CZ stepped into my master’s in public health lecture room to tell us all about the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. It was a long title but when shortened to ‘The Union’ it became catchy, somewhat elite. I remember asking him a lot of questions in that class and he, as he did, responded posit

The pain and physiology of infertility and miscarriages

Ch enai Hove* (28), mother of one,  was just over 26 weeks pregnant when she went into pre-term labour and delivered a premature baby. Doctors struggled to resuscitate the tiny baby who weighed only 1.2kg. Her baby lived for a day before succumbing. This was Chenai’s second premature baby. The previous one had been a year ago and the early labour occurred at the same time in her pregnancy. It was found that Chenai had an incompetent cervix due to injuries that occurred in her very first pregnancy and would need a cervical stitch to be put in place for subsequent pregnancies. In our society, pregnancy and delivering a baby is the very definition of womanhood.  What happens when that seemingly straight-forward process goes wrong? How do you know if your pregnancy is high-risk? Is there anything you can do to prevent complications? What are the top signs women can look out for in their pregnancy? Although the majority of pregnancies are uneventful, sometimes complications do occur. 

Depression is not a black person’s disease - Snap out of it?

Stay positive! Look up, love, laugh and live! Don’t worry, be happy! Sometimes you smile because you are happy, and sometimes you can become happy because you smiled. Sound familiar? I am sure you have seen these type of status posts with motivational messages on friends’ social media pages. You know those pictures with the inspirational messages. But sometimes it’s just not sinking into your core. You can’t smile. You can’t be positive. All the tricks are not working. You just feel sad. How can we tell when depression is just a natural phase of life or a serious clinical illness which requires more than just a friend’s shoulder? Feeling sad is natural, especially after a stressful life situation or when your expectations have not been met. Disappointment is a normal part of life, granted. For example, it is normal to feel down after a major disappointment, or to have trouble sleeping or eating after a difficult relationship break-up. Usually, within a few days, perhaps after talk

Stee's 300things - Deconstructed

Me again. I have had a lot of questions regarding the #300things I posted about previously. 300 things is a vision list of 300 things I was inspired to write. This was after being inspired by one of Steve Harvey's motivational talks. It is a powerful tool which transformed the way I dreamed and changed my perspective on goals and vision-boarding. Already some of my 300 things came to be and I just had to share. But maybe I over-simplified it. The most common question I received from people was: is it really possible to want 300 things? What kind of things? What are your things and which ones came true? The trend is most people were failing to get to 300 things. SO I decided to follow up the last post with this deconstruction to clarify and help complete your list: 1. You can include other people Your list is a list of the future you want. Every little thing. Our loved ones are in our future and their future determines our peace and happiness too. So by all means, you can writ