Youterus Health (2026)

29/05/2026

This week, our Founder and Chief Steward, Dr. Fatou Wurie, was at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy, sitting alongside a small group of community leaders, policymakers, health workers, and partners convened by VillageReach.

The shared question was a hard one. As Africa's health financing landscape shifts under our feet, whose voices actually shape what gets built next?

The conversation came at a moment when global health financing is being rewritten in real time. The Lusaka Agenda. The Accra Reset. Donor exits. Shrinking aid. New frameworks being drafted in capitals far from the women and girls they will eventually touch. The question of whose voice carries weight in these moments is not academic. It decides who lives well, who suffers quietly, and who never gets counted at all.

Dr. Wurie carried into that room what Youterus stands on. That uterine health is not a niche concern. She shared the tools we are building to measure the true state of uterine health across the continent, and the framework we use to name what so many African women carry silently across their lifetimes. Pain that goes unspoken, conditions that go undiagnosed, decisions made about bodies without the people inside them.

We are grateful for the four days, the company kept, and the questions asked.

# RockefellerFoundation

28/05/2026

We asked women what they were told about their period before they got it.

Watch what they said and then think about what you were told.

For most of us, the first conversation about our period was barely a conversation at all. A whisper from a mother. A warning from an aunt. A pad was handed to us in silence or nothing at all. Just blood one day and the expectation to figure it out alone.

And that first conversation, or the absence of one, set the tone for everything that followed. Because if you cannot talk about your period openly, you cannot ask: is this amount of bleeding normal? If you were taught to endure pain quietly, how would you ever know that the cramps keeping you in bed are not just "bad luck" but could be a sign of endometriosis, fibroids, or adenomyosis?

That silence is not just uncomfortable; it is dangerous.

When we cannot talk about our periods, we cannot tell the difference between what is normal and what needs medical attention. We cannot catch heavy menstrual bleeding early, before it leads to chronic anaemia. We cannot recognise the symptoms of conditions that affect millions of women but take years, sometimes over a decade, to diagnose. We lose the chance to act early, when it matters most.

This is why open conversations about menstrual health are not a nice-to-have. They are healthcare. They are the first screening tool any woman has: her own understanding of her body.

A woman needs honest information before she gets her period, so she is not afraid.
She needs it during, so she can recognise when something changes.
And she needs it throughout her life, because her body will keep changing and she deserves to understand why.

So today, on Menstrual Health Day, talk about your period. Out loud. To your daughter, your sister, your friend, your colleague. Not in a whisper. Not as a warning. As information. As care. As something she deserves to understand about her own body.

21/05/2026

A girl's first period is the earliest point at which a health system can prove itself useful to her. Most are not designed to meet her there.
The adolescent health agenda is built around HIV, early pregnancy, and gender-based violence, not around the moment she first bleeds and learns from the world around her whether her body is information or shame.

At the World Health Summit Regional Meeting in Nairobi, our Founder and Chief Steward, Dr. Fatou Wurie, argued that the issues on the adolescent health agenda are not three crises sitting beside each other. In her words: "What we are really describing is one crisis running through the same body, in the same community, at the same time, repeating itself across the continent and across generations."

The point she returned to was menstruation.

Not access to pads.
Not the supply chain for sanitary products.
The experience itself.

This is the part of the conversation that gets lost. Programmes addressing HIV, gender-based violence, and reproductive health continue to sit in separate corridors of the health system, when the body of the girl they are designed for is moving through all of them at once. And the threats she faces rarely come from strangers. The violence she experiences is often inside relationships she has been taught to trust.
Power is what holds this arrangement in place. It decides who learns what, when, and from whom. What is described as a funding gap or a policy gap is the visible shape of that arrangement. It is not its cause.

Meaningful change comes when young people's lived realities sit at the centre of how the system is designed from the start. It means a girl learning that pain is information, not shame. It means her first period being met with knowledge, not silence. It means uterine health entering the conversation at twelve, not at thirty-two when she is already in pain.

This is the work Youterus is built for. Uterine health, governed in Africa, that starts with her first period and follows her across her life.

30/04/2026

This week in Nairobi, we were proud to co-host a session at the World Health Summit Regional Meeting that asked a question Africa can no longer sidestep.

Designing Power: Women Leading Africa's Health R&D Systems ( co-convened with Speak Up Africa and CHReaD ) brought together leaders from Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and South Africa for 90 minutes of honest conversation about who really holds power in Africa's health research systems.

The picture was clear: funding that bypasses women-led research. Cultural norms that keep critical women's health issues in the shadows. A gap between the science women are producing and the systems meant to scale it.

🧏🏿‍♀️But so was the way forward. The session featured the Women's Health R&D Scorecard — an African-led tool built to track women's inclusion and leadership across the R&D value chain. Not more talk. Measurement. Accountability.

This is the work we exist for at Youterus Health. Closing the gender data gap. Making sure that as Africa builds its health sovereignty, women are leading the design — not watching from the sidelines.

Thank you to every voice that made this session what it was: Dr Raymonde Goudou Coffie, Mary Muthoni CBS HSC, Glaudina Loots, Dr Fatou Wurie, Rabera Kenyanya, Marième Gueye, Faith Wanjeri, Yaye Sophiétou Diop, and Prof Julio Rakotonirina.

The question has shifted. It's no longer about including women. It's about making sure they have real decision-making power.

27/04/2026

Who holds the pen on Africa's health R&D agenda decides whose health gets financed, studied, and scaled. ✍🏾

Women make up only 31.5% of researchers in sub-Saharan Africa, yet hold up the continent's health workforce.That gap shapes which diseases get prioritised, how trials are designed, and which solutions reach women.

On 28 April, at the World Health Summit Regional Meeting in Nairobi, Youterus Health is proud to co-organise Designing Power: Women Leading Africa's Health R&D Systems alongside , , and African Voices of Science.

We are moving the conversation from participation to power:

✅ Naming the structural barriers
✅ Presenting the Women's Health R&D Scorecard
✅ Securing time-bound commitments from policymakers and funders

Featuring our Founder & CEO Dr. Fatou Wurie alongside ministers, scientists, and innovators reshaping Africa's research future.

📅 April 28, 2026 · 09:30–11:00(EAT)
📍 United Nations Office, Agora Outdoor, Nairobi

24/04/2026

Last Friday, our Office in Freetown was full not just of people, but of presence. People came to watch a movie screening, but they also came to listen, to question, and to speak openly about something that is too often left unspoken. A condition that affects an estimated 200 million people worldwide, yet remains almost invisible across many African healthcare systems: endometriosis.

What made the evening powerful wasn’t just the film; it was what happened around it. The quiet nods of recognition. The moments of courage when someone chose to share. The collective realisation that this is not rare, not isolated, and not something to keep pushing aside.
Some of the numbers we shared sat heavily with all of us:

- Black women are roughly 50% less likely to be diagnosed with endometriosis.
- In Nigeria, nearly 48% of women who underwent a laparoscopy were found to have endometriosis lesions.
- And across much of Africa, we still don’t know the true prevalence because the research simply hasn’t been done.

Behind every statistic is a story, often years of pain, dismissal, and unanswered questions. That’s why spaces like this matter. Because awareness is not only about information, it’s also about recognition, validation, and the beginning of change.

A heartfelt thank you to our panellists, Georgina Melford Vincent, Dr. Valerie John-Cole, Lala Sidibe, Suafiatu Habib Tunis, and Dr. Mohamed Mbawah, for your honesty, your expertise, and your willingness to hold space for such an important conversation.

Thank you to ThinkEndo for co-hosting and helping bring this to life. And to every single person who stayed, who spoke, who listened, and who leaned into what can be an uncomfortable but necessary dialogue, thank you for making it more than just a movie night.

17/04/2026

Our Founder and CEO, Dr. Fatou Wurie DrPH, FAPH, will be speaking at the World Health Summit Regional Meeting 2026 in Nairobi.

She will join a panel on Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Addressing the Triple Threat of HIV/STIs, Early Pregnancy, and Violence.

Across the continent, adolescents and young people are navigating systems that were not designed with them in mind. High rates of HIV and STIs. Early and unintended pregnancies. Gender-based and interpersonal violence.

These are not new challenges. But the context around them is shifting fast.Funding is shrinking. Policies are tightening. Access to comprehensive sexuality education and youth-responsive services is becoming more limited, not less.

And yet, the response remains fragmented.
One programme for HIV. Another for reproductive health. Another for violence prevention. Each addressing a piece of the problem, but rarely the whole reality of a young person’s life.

This panel asks a different question:
What would it look like to build systems that respond to the full picture?
From integrated, rights-based approaches to youth leadership and cross-sector collaboration, the conversation will focus on what must change, not just what exists.

Because young people are not waiting to be included.
They are already leading, building, and reimagining what care can look like when it reflects their lived realities.

The work now is to meet them there.

📍 World Health Summit Regional Meeting, Nairobi
📅 27 April 2026
🕒 15:30–17:00

13/04/2026

An estimated 200 million people live with endometriosis globally. It takes an average of 10 years to receive a diagnosis. In countries with well-resourced healthcare systems, that delay is devastating. In Sierra Leone and across sub-Saharan Africa, where uterine health has barely entered the policy conversation, it is nearly invisible.

On Friday 17 April at 3:30 PM,

Youterus Health and Think Endo are hosting a public screening of Below the Belt at our Freetown office (49A Main Motor Road, Wilberforce).

The documentary follows four women navigating years of dismissed pain, misdiagnosis, and a healthcare system that was never built to take their symptoms seriously. It has been screened at Harvard, MIT, and the World Economic Forum. Its impact partners include UNFPA and the NIH. And now it is coming to Freetown, because these are not only Western stories. Women here live this too.

After the film, a moderated panel discussion will dig into the questions the documentary raises and what they mean for us here.

Our Speakers:

- Georgina Vincent Melford
- Valerie John-Cole
- Lala Sidibe
- Suafiatu Habib Tunis
- DR. Mohamed F.K Mbawah

The conversation will cover why it takes so long for women to be diagnosed, and the role that societal taboos, physician bias, and lack of education play in that delay. It will address the pattern of women being told their pain is normal or that they are exaggerating and what drives that dismissal in clinical practice.

The discussion will be conversational, honest, and open to the room.

Seats are limited to 35 to 40 people. If you are in Freetown and you care about uterine health, health equity, or community-led advocacy, we want you in the room.

RSVP link in the Bio.

09/04/2026

1 in 3 women admitted to Princess Christian Maternity Hospital in Freetown has fibroids. Most arrive at advanced stages because nothing in the system was built to find them earlier.

Behind that statistic are women like Mariama. Women who spent years navigating fertility struggles, fibroids, ovarian cysts, surgeries, and chronic pain with almost no support. Women who learned to manage their symptoms from YouTube because the health system never reached them. Women whose childlessness became public property for anyone who felt like commenting.

In Sierra Leone, there is still no national policy on uterine health. Community-level screening barely exists. And conditions like fibroids and ovarian cysts go undetected until they become emergencies or are found by accident during pregnancy.

Meanwhile, the women carrying these conditions also carry stigma, financial strain, and the pressure of a society that measures their worth by whether they have children. The medical reality and the social reality compound each other. You can't separate the fibroid from the insult at the family gathering. You can't separate the cyst pain from the fact that she couldn't afford a specialist.

That's why we built Unmute the Womb. 3,500 women across Sierra Leone and Nigeria are enrolled. We're building screening tools that work at community level, in the languages women speak, so that conditions are found before they become crises.

Mariama's story holds fibroids, cysts, fertility, war, displacement, and stigma all at once. Not as separate chapters but as one life. And that's the reality for millions of women across Sierra Leone and across Africa.

The conditions overlap.
The silence compounds.
system was never built to see the full picture.
Her story is not rare. It's just rarely heard.

🧄Share this for every woman whose body carried more than anyone around her knew.

03/04/2026

Below the Belt is a documentary that breaks that silence. It follows four women fighting to be believed, fighting to be treated, and pushing back against a system that has been looking the other way for decades. It has been screened at Harvard, MIT, the World Economic Forum, and now it is coming to Freetown.

Youterus Health and are bringing this film to our community for a free screening.

Date: Friday, 17 April 2026
Time: 3:30 PM
Venue: Youterus Health Sierra Leone Office, 49A Main Motor Road, Wilberforce, Freetown
Seats: Limited to 35 to 40 spots

RSVP through the link in our bio to reserve your seat.

Endometriosis is a condition where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows in other parts of the body. It causes chronic pain, infertility, and organ damage. Around 200 million people worldwide live with it. 50% of infertility in women is linked to it. And on average, it takes 10 years to receive a diagnosis.
Ten years of being told to take a painkiller and lie down. Ten years of being sent from doctor to doctor with no answers. Ten years of silence.

Now imagine going through all of that in a healthcare system that barely acknowledges uterine health conditions exist.

In Sierra Leone and across sub-Saharan Africa, the conversation around endometriosis has not even started for most women. There is no screening pathway, very little public awareness, and almost no data. Women are enduring symptoms they cannot name, for conditions nobody has taught them to recognise.

Youterus Health

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