‘I had already given my baby a name’ – This is climate breakdown

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Location Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Disaster Ill with dengue

Gowend (not her real name) lives in Burkina Faso. In 2023, in the early stages of pregnancy, she was admitted to hospital and diagnosed as having had dengue fever, a viral illness transmitted by mosquitoes which is, in a small number of cases, potentially fatal. It has been linked with miscarriage by some studies. Dengue is on the rise in Africa and Asia, partly thanks to the warming climate, and is increasingly being detected in Europe, too.
The first time I had dengue, I was starting my second pregnancy. I didn’t know I was pregnant at that time. But I didn’t feel well. It started with a migraine, which lasted a while. So I went to do a test, which confirmed that I was indeed pregnant.
The migraines persisted. I took Efferalgan every day, but I still had headaches, it wasn’t getting better. I had pain in my neck, a kind of stiffness there, it wasn’t good. I had pain everywhere. I had pain in my joints, even to walk. I didn’t have appetite. I often had trouble breathing. I felt like I was suffocating. Honestly, it was a whole sport to be able to breathe. My mother-in-law told me that since I had a girl for my first pregnancy, with the hormonal changes and all, this time it must be a boy for my second pregnancy. That explained my headaches. So, I didn’t think it was an illness. I said to myself, maybe that was it. Maybe I was going to have my boy now.
So, I stayed like that. Then one day, I lost consciousness in the morning. I wanted to prepare my first [child] so she could go to school. And then, it happened. Actually, everyone thought the worst, because, from what they say, when I fainted, my eyes were still open. I had the appearance of a dead person. My husband took me to hospital and it was only after half an hour, an hour that I was conscious again. Even the doctors at the hospital, they were scared. The next day they came back and told me: “Madame, you are really a fighter.” It was as if I was fighting against death. I was fighting for my baby. I was fighting for my own life, too. So, I was fighting for two lives at the same time.
At the hospital, they did a bunch of examinations, and they showed that I had an old dengue. The first time I had really taken notice about dengue was when a friend of mine died from it, from haemorrhage. In his case he had started self-medicating with anti-inflammatories, and that made it worse for this illness. Because when it comes to platelets, I don’t really know what happens, but it causes haemorrhage.
You hear about dengue from afar but you don’t imagine it could ever happen to you. But once it touches you, you start realising how serious it can be for a person.
The hospital said they’d need to keep me there the whole day. The next day, when I went home, it wasn’t good at all. During the night, I went to take a shower and noticed that I was bleeding. I immediately called my sister and she came right away to the house and they took me to the medical centre near home. The next day the midwives told me that it was better to do an ultrasound to see what was there. When I did the ultrasound, I asked the lady doing the ultrasound if my baby was OK. She told me that it was OK, that my baby was fine.
She gave me the results. They had medical terms I didn’t understand. I tried to type them on Google.
I felt that there was something not good. I thought I was going to have a miscarriage, seeing the results. But I told myself: “No, stay calm, go to the hospital, the doctor will interpret.”
The doctor was also surprised. As soon as he saw the results, he said: “Why did they let you come here despite these results?” I asked why he said that to me.
He told me that I had a miscarriage. I couldn’t believe it was true. When I lifted my head, I saw women sitting, pregnant. There were others who were in labour, in pain.
I saw how I was going back without my baby. The bleeding was there, and I was feeling the pain little by little. It was a very atrocious pain. We had to go back to the hospital again to do a curettage [a procedure in which the uterine lining is scraped out].
I had waited for this baby so much. I had already given it a name and everything, I cherished it already even in my belly and all. It wasn’t easy. I remember when I was going to the hospital, I asked my husband to stop because I wanted to see my mother. When I arrived, I told her that I had already given the name Akhbar to my baby. I asked my mother to pray that there is nothing wrong with my Akhbar. She told me: “Go, go my daughter, I will pray for him.” But despite everything I did, I lost my baby. My little angel.
It’s only recently that I said to myself, maybe it’s the dengue that caused my miscarriage, but I told myself, it’s better not to try to dig deeper. Because anyway, you have lost your baby. But at the same time, I told myself, it’s better to know if it’s really the dengue.
It feels better now, to talk about it a bit. To share also, I think, the pain. To see that you are not alone. Even if the pain is personal, right? That’s why I like to talk about it. Because sometimes, I think there are many women who live that. They stay alone, closed off, thinking that the problem comes from themselves. And yet, the problem, it’s not from the woman, right? It’s not that she didn’t take care of herself. It’s not that she did something wrong. It’s just that sometimes, it happens.
I said to myself, what did I do? What didn’t work?
Maybe I failed somewhere? Maybe I did something wrong that caused the miscarriage and everything. I was blaming myself, I felt guilty. But thank God, I had the support of my husband.
Even in the results, there was never anything clear. It just said that the baby wasn’t alive any more, or that something was wrong. But the exact cause, no doctor ever told me clearly: “Madame, maybe it was this, maybe it was that.” No, it just stayed like that.
The second time I got dengue I was pregnant again. This time, I was seven months pregnant. Even now, when I go for postnatal check-ups, most of the midwives recognise me right away. Because my case really marked them. Everyone was trying to understand it, to study it. I had to be in hospital again. The headaches were so unbearable, I almost tore my hair out because the headache was so unbearable. I was literally pulling at my hair. They put me on oxygen because I couldn’t breathe. For a while, I passed out again. And the people who were there said that even when I fainted, my eyes stayed open – wide open. I looked like a dead person.
They had to help me eat. I couldn’t even eat by myself, they had to help me swallow a few spoonfuls. To get up, they had to lift me. To lie down, they had to help me lie down. I spent two days like that. That’s the only memory I have from those moments.

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And I was afraid of losing this baby too, the one I was carrying. My prayer at that moment was that God would truly grant me the grace to have my baby, to hold my baby. I kept saying: “God, please grant me the grace to hold my baby in my hands.”
I was also asking my little angel [Akhbar] to watch over the baby I was carrying. I knew he was gone, but from where he was, I was asking him to always watch over me – to watch over the baby to come, his sister to come.
So even now, when I go to the hospital, some people call me the survivor, or the one who came back. Everyone gives me a nickname, because my case really wasn’t simple.
It’s as if I escaped death. Just like that. Since then I’ve changed a lot of things. I didn’t like covering my whole body [to protect from mosquitoes], but I do it now. I use the mosquito coil, we spray the house … When I go out in the morning, I spray the house before leaving. I try to put a bit of order in my surroundings. I used to have little pots with flowers, but I tried to get rid of them so they don’t attract mosquitoes. In the evening and during the day I use the mosquito repellant cream for me and my children.
I’ve become Madame Awareness. When family comes over, I try to organise things a bit, to eliminate water puddles. With the mayor of the district, we tried to spray the whole neighbourhood, because it was something close to my heart. We had the neighbourhood sprayed, and now things are better.
It changed the way I see things. It changed my personality. It made me mature. I wasn’t like this before, the kind of person who always has mosquito repellant, who sprays herself all the time. Before, I wasn’t like that at all.
It was as if nothing could happen to me. Not even dengue! As if I were immune. Now I pay much more attention, especially to my children. As a mother, I have to protect myself first – so that I can protect my children too.
Gowend is not her real name.

Design and development by Harry Fischer and Pip Lev.
Picture research by Jim Hedge