Lucy Dollokieh, a mother of four from Liberia’s Nimba County, developed severe pains when urinating and thought she had been cursed by a witch, but when a volunteer came to her village describing diabetes symptoms she recognized them, went to a nearby hospital and was diagnosed with diabetes. She now injects herself daily with insulin. With low awareness of the disease’s symptoms and only one hospital in the country that can diagnose it - Ganta Methodist Hospital in Nimba County - the vast majority of the estimated 50,000 cases in Liberia go undiagnosed, according to the World Diabetes Foundation (WDF).

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first female president, has been proactive about fighting sexual and gender-based violence. The Liberian government and the United Nations jointly committed to reducing gender-based violence by 30 per cent by the end of 2011. The Ministry of Gender and Development also has a special unit dedicated to tackling sexual and gender-based violence, the Gender-Based Violence Task Force, which aims to coordinate violence prevention and response. Despite the end of the nation's civil war, many Liberian women still face violence daily.

Liberian officials at Bahn refugee camp - set up by the government and the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) to shelter Ivoirians fleeing violence - prefer residents to play down their political affiliations, and discourage the wearing of partisan T-shirts or the holding of political meetings. But late on a Saturday afternoon, with little to do and much to discuss, Ivoirian refugees talked with anger and concern about their future, while ruefully reviewing the events of the past six months in their country just across the border. 'I don't want to be here, but what choice does a refugee have?' asked Sandigui Lacinje Traoré, who previously worked for the Ivoirian state media in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire’s administrative capital. 'The war is not over yet as far as I am concerned,' Traoré told IRIN.