We are incredibly honoured that our photograph ‘Sarah Simon’, taken by William Nsai has won the Irish Global Health Network’s Global Photography Competition, and ‘The Oncho Elimination Team’ was shortlisted. You can read all about the competition, and see the other wonderful shortlisted entries here. We’re still pinching ourselves, but it really is true – we’re the winners of the Irish Global Health Network’s Global Photography Competition! 

The competition was judged by Savannah Dodd from the Photography Ethics Centre; Ben de la Cruz, editor of multimedia coverage on global health and development at NPR; and Matt Writtle, an award winning documentary and portrait photographer.

Participants were asked to respond to the following with their photo entries:

What does working in global health look like? What are the realities on the ground? What are the challenges, and what are the impacts?

We love telling the stories of the amazing people we get to meet through our Global Health projects, so it feels wonderful to be recognised in this way. 

Our context statement for our entry is below. 

Sarah Simon, an Lymphatic Filariasis sufferer washes herself in the way she has been taught, restoring dignity and a better quality of life.

This photograph was taken in Nasawara State in late February 2020. She is one of a group of women who attended a workshop held by Community Drug Distributors on how to wash themselves in such a way that will minimise disfiguration, or prevent them developing the disease.

The workshop was filmed by Cloud9Media for the Meztican Donation Program for a project about broken transmission in Nasawara State. 

As filmmakers documenting NTD programs, one of the main challenges is not to present subjects in a way that is tarnished with our preconceptions of what it must be like to live with a disease, or in a different culture. 

The aim is not to invoke pity, but to show the successes and achievements that are gained from working to eradicate NTDs and therefore demonstrate that they are of high value and worth continuing funding. 

This photograph portrays a proud, hardworking woman and loving mother, who has accepted some help from her peers in order to give herself more independence and dignity.