Obstetric fistula is a major health problem, and a difficult topic to write about. This month brought both joy and tremendous sorrow for those of us hoping to impact health coverage and improve lives here in Mozambique.

How, and where, do I start explaining what Winstone Zulu meant for Africans living with HIV? How do I tell the story of this Zambian activist who turned a death sentence into a rich life for him, his family and millions of other Africans?

Before the end of the year, Angola will vaccinate 10,000 young teen girls against human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer - the most frequent cancer among Angolan women aged 15-44, and the most lethal, killing more than 1,000 women every year.

There is nothing like interviewing women with fistula to realize, in your heart and in your bones, what fistula does to women: the humiliation, marginalization, loss of self-esteem, and depression. Fistula is an orifice resulting from ruptured tissue between bladder, rectum and vagina that provokes permanent incontinence. Feces and urine flow through the vagina.

Obstetric fistula is caused by early and repeated pregnancies, long and complicated deliveries without proper medical care, delays in reaching hospital, clandestine abortion and violent rape.

Reporter Helder Macuacua and I enter the Maxaquene sports pavilion, packed with 5,000 believers, and we freeze. As if cued to our arrival, prophet Cremildo thunders from the stage: “Those journalists who criticize us, they are driven by envy, by evil, by the devil. They shall feel our wrath!”