Saving Wonder

With her eight-month-old son Wonder tied snugly to her back, Naomi showed up at the meeting point to greet us in front of a small hotel where the British, American, and Ghanaian flags were fluttering in the mild morning breeze beneath a deep blue sky overseeing a lush landscape dotted with small settlements and crisscrossed by ochre lines. We had agreed to meet Naomi on the outskirts of the Kumasi metropolis region, so she could show us the way to her house in one of the many settlements in this agglomeration of more than 4 million people in south-central Ghana, which were mostly connected through untarred roads, where no navigation system or compass would have allowed us to find our way.

The house, which stood at the corner next to a church that was full of worshippers this Good Friday morning, looked stately with its rich garden of palms, cassava plants, and fruit trees, enshrined by a neatly built garden wall that looked like a chessboard from afar.

Naomi and her son Wonder in front of their house.

But as we drew closer and stepped into the building, we found that the house had neither glass windows nor insulation under the spacious tin roof. Puddles of water were collecting on the kitchen floor, which, like in the rest of the building, was made of stamped red earth that would get damp after every thunderstorm to become an ideal breeding ground for malaria-bearing mosquitos. Wonder’s story Naomi, a mother of five, is far too familiar with malaria. “Malaria is a terrible disease,” she said when we sat down in the small entrance hall of her house that led to the kitchen, bathroom, and the sleeping quarters. Outside, the worshipper´s songs could be heard. “When I get it, I start feeling weak, I can’t eat and I can’t sleep.” At 38, she had gone through repeated episodes of the disease herself. But not as bad as her oldest son, who in recent years has come down with malaria almost every three months, requiring frequent hospital visits and occasional admission. But even his verdict was not as critical as that of Wonder, who had been a few months old when he contracted the disease for the first time. Wonder! The name might be an apt description for the little baby boy with the large eyes, who looked at me with a mixture of curiosity and fear when I talked to his mother. Wonder was a fragile little baby who needed intensive care at the neonatal ward at the Methodist Hospital in Ankaase from the first minute of his life. His doctor, Emmanuel Aidoo, described Wonder in need of heightened care for almost two months before he was able to be released home. But when he was rushed back to the hospital with high fever just a few weeks later, Dr. Aidoo initially suspected the boy to have suffered from a bacterial infection.

He treated Wonder with antibiotics, as is standard procedure. In parallel, Dr. Aidoo and his team also performed a regular malaria check. This is how they found that Wonder had contracted the disease and had a very high malarial parasite count, which meant that his life could be potentially in danger given his overall delicate condition. A cross-industry chain reaction “We also tested Wonder for malaria,” Dr. Aidoo said. “The high parasite count meant that we had to act quickly and decisively. But given Wonder’s peculiar situation, I hoped that we find an oral antimalarial suitable for him after his IV antimalarials.” According to standard medical practice, infants with severe malaria such as Wonder are typically treated with intravenous therapy first and are then switched to oral anti-malarial to complete therapy. In Wonder’s case, this presented a problem because there was no weight-appropriate formulation to continue with his oral therapy. Given the urgency but also the delicacy of the patient, Dr. Aidoo was thinking of another possibility.

Dr. Emanuel Aidoo. His fast reaction was instrumental for the swift recovery of Wonder.

He had just recently read an article that a new treatment for newborns and infants from 2 to 5 kilograms had been developed by Novartis and its partner Medicines for Malaria Venture to specifically treat babies from two to five kilograms. This would allow him to administer the medication without second-guessing the dosing. He reached out to a colleague who contacted Novartis to provide access to the medicine. What followed was an emergency procedure that saw Novartis associates in Kumasi reach out to the hospital within a few hours to assist Dr. Aidoo in his efforts to help Wonder.

At the center of this fast and furious action was Isaac Amponsah, a medical representative of Novartis who lives in Kumasi. He is well acquainted with the local health infrastructure and has travelled far and wide across the country. “My first reaction was, ‘wow!’, this baby needs to get a solution quickly,” he recalled. Acting almost by instinct, Amponsah immediately coordinated with a pharmacy that had the medicine in stock and arranged for it to be delivered to the hospital. He then traveled to Ankaase himself to follow up with the doctor, see the patient, and support the introduction of the treatment. For Naomi and her son, the short reaction time made all the difference: “I was very scared when my son got malaria because he was born underweight. I’m so grateful that Dr. Aidoo stepped in, contacted the right people, and made sure Wonder received the right medication.” Disease burden is still high For Amponsah, the experience was deeply rewarding too. He was not only able to help Wonder get the medicine in time. The incident also made him realize that the collaboration between pharmacies, hospitals, and the private sector is not just a transactional relationship but thrives on personal trust, dedication, and determination.

Novartis manager Johnson Obour in talks with hospital pharmacist Dr. Yaw Osei-Gyamfi, Dr. Aidoo and Isaac Amponsah.

“It was very satisfying to know that this baby could get something safe and specific for its condition,” Amponsah said. “Babies cannot speak for themselves, but now they can get the treatment they need. It’s not just about delivering a product; it’s about making sure every baby has a treatment option.” The need for such an option is pressing. According to the 2025 World Malaria Report from the World Health Organization, babies and young children are still among the most vulnerable populations globally. In 2024, according to the latest available global figures, malaria caused around 610,000 deaths worldwide with most of them concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Around 75 percent of these deaths were among children under five, whose immune systems are not yet fully developed and who are therefore particularly vulnerable. The need for innovation and collaboration Against this background, medical innovation for this patient group is of paramount importance, said Dr. Aidoo, who stressed that the new malaria treatment directly improves everyday clinical practice by making treatments “safer, easier, and more reliable,” especially in urgent situations. “It was one of those moments where everything came together,” Dr. Aidoo said. “We were able to get the right drug in time and achieve a successful outcome. Before this, we had to manipulate tablets or suspensions for older children to treat these babies. Now we have something made specifically for them.” But innovation does not stop here. For Dr. Aidoo as well as Kumasi-based Novartis manager Johnson Obour, who worked closely with Isaac Amponsah on the case, collaboration is equally important since even the best medical solution loses its usefulness if it does not reach patients in time. “There is a gap between innovation and access,” Obour said. “We need to bridge that in order that patients can receive the medicines so the world can truly benefit from what we create in healthcare.” Besides running awareness campaigns and reaching out to doctors and pharmacists across sub-Saharan Africa, as was the case with Dr. Aidoo, building trust and creating strong ties with healthcare partners is a fundamental building block in spurring access to healthcare, Obour said.

Ankaase Methodist Hospital Head pharmacist, Dr. Yaw Osei-Gyamfi, agreed and was convinced that the quick adaptation of the new formulation and dose strength was also a sign of the positive shift in Ghana’s healthcare system, where capacity, local production, and openness to collaboration have become instrumental in improving access to better treatments. “Ghana is not sitting back. A lot is happening to strengthen pharmaceutical care and local capacity,” Osei-Gyamfi said. But he sees even more potential for improvement. “We are open to collaboration and having deeper research and partnerships here would allow us to further improve,” he said.

Dr. Yaw Osei-Gyamfi says that collaboration and partnerships will help the Methodist Hospital in Ankaase to accelerate innovation and access to treatments.

Persistent infrastructure challenges But despite the rising optimism that was spurred by the fast recovery of Wonder, who looks like a strong and healthy boy today, barriers to rein in malaria remain high. This is not just because of innovation and access barriers, but also due to infrastructure challenges that seem hard to fix. In a study published in 2024 in the Malaria Journal, researchers led by Stephen Opoku Afriyie from the Department of Theoretical and Applied Biology at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi found that bad housing conditions play a major role in malaria transmission.

The researchers suggested that “efforts to improve housing characteristics such as installation of roofing ceiling, screening doors, and clearing potential mosquito breeding sites should be encouraged” to help reduce malaria, both in rural and urban areas. Later that night after our meeting with Naomi and her son, when a thunderstorm swept through Kumasi, covering everything under a thick veil of rain, I thought again about the conditions in which she and her family lived. Although some mosquito nets were put in place, the building only had a wire-mesh door that was covered with a thin curtain. The puddles of water that I had seen in the morning, I imagined, were growing bigger as the rain dripped through the roof and as water kept trickling in from the street. Given this situation, the fight against malaria, it was clear, would continue. But I was also convinced that there were many more people such as Emmanuel Aidoo, Yaw Osei-Gyamfi, Isaac Amponsah and Johnson Obour, who would continue to work towards finding solutions for some of the most pressing challenges – be it housing infrastructure, medical innovation, or access to healthcare. Wonder, I thought, was living proof that such progress is not a distant goal, but an attainable point on a realistic timeline.