Mulikat Okanlawon of Nigeria contracted noma when she was a child. The gangrenous infection ate away at the flesh and bone in her face. She survived and has had surgery to repair scars left by the disease. Today she works at the Sokoto Noma Hospital, guiding noma patients on the road to recovery. Claire Jeantet and Fabrice Caterin hide caption
Bats congregate in the Bat Cave in Queen Elizabeth National Park on August 24, 2018. Scientists placed GPS devices on some of the bats to determine flight patterns and how they transmit Marburg virus to humans. Approximately 50,000 bats dwell in the cave. Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption
Krishna Lal stands in front of her house. The town of Chamba is on the hill behind her. Raksha Kumar/NPR hide caption
Kelna Begum, 30, stands with her child in front of a building that's been raised to survive seasonal floods in her village of Golabari in the Sunamganj region of northern Bangladesh. Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR hide caption
tk Olivia Taussig-Rees for NPR hide caption
Military surgeon Jiang Yanyong, the doctor who defied the government and spoke the truth of SARS in 2003, talks at a forum on the 10th anniversary of SARS held in Beijing. He died this past week at age 91. Simon Song/South China Morning Post via Getty Images hide caption
Malawi (pictured above) and Mozambique were devastated by the Cyclone Freddy, which lasted at least 36 days and made landfall twice in Mozambique. Thoko Chikondi/AP hide caption
These two photos, taken in 2014 by scientist Eddie Holmes, show raccoon dogs and unknown birds caged in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. GPS coordinates of these images confirm that the animals were housed in the southwest corner of the market, where researchers found evidence of the coronavirus in January 2020. Eddie Holmes hide caption
Four or five goats scrambled across San Francisco last week, captured in videos posted on social media. So how do goats fare in urban settings? screengrab by NPR via u/kevin1760/Reddit hide caption
A quake survivor spends a night outside in Idlib, Syria on Feb. 9, 2023, following 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes centered in neighboring Turkey. A doctor in Syria says it's still difficult to get needed medical supplies. Muhammed Said/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images hide caption
Art school students in Mumbai finish up a painting of Indian actors N.T. Rama Rao Jr. (left) and Ram Charan of the movie RRR, whose dance song "Naatu Naatu" became the first song from an Indian film to win an Oscar. Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Can cuddling or kissing a pet put you at risk of contracting an unknown virus? Can people pass a virus to pets? Those are questions that pet owners ponder. And if Centu (left) and Ruby (right) could talk, they'd probably ask as well. Ben de la Cruz/NPR; Lauren Migaki/NPR hide caption
A South Korean child masks up to ride a scooter on Feb. 27, 2020 in Seoul. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images hide caption
Policemen try to stop activists during a rally to mark International Women's Day in Islamabad on March 8 — and demand equal rights for women in Pakistan. Thousands of women took part in rallies across the country despite efforts by authorities in several cities to block the marches. Aamir Qureshi/ AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Munyaradzi Musvosvi, a researcher who works for the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative, in a storage facility at the University of Cape Town that holds in deep freeze the blood samples of people exposed to TB. He's part of a team working to develop a potential mRNA vaccine by looking at the immune cells in the blood samples. Tommy Trenchard for NPR hide caption
Caretaker Bomman with Raghu. "I feel like getting Raghu was a gift from God," he says. Netflix/Screenshot by NPR hide caption
Dr. Firdausi Qadri has been engaged in a decades-long battle against a microbial foe — the bacterium that causes cholera. Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR hide caption
A little girl clutches a small bag of rice — leftovers from a meal she was served at a free-food hall at a sprawling shrine to the Sufi saint Bari Imam on the outskirts of Pakistani capital Islamabad. Many visitors to the shrine scoop up the free meal they are given into plastic bags to feed children at home. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption
Security guards stand in front of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 11, 2020, after the market had been closed following an outbreak of COVID-19 there. Two studies document samples of SARS-CoV-2 from stalls where live animals were sold. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
In 2003, President George W. Bush created PEPFAR to help countries tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis. Four years later, he spoke at the Rose Garden to urge lawmakers to set aside $30 billion for the cause over the next 5 years. Joining him were Kunene Tantoh of South Africa and her 4-year-old son (pictured). Tantoh, who is HIV-positive, coordinated a U.S.-funded mentoring program for mothers with HIV. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images via Getty Images hide caption