Photo Gallery: Third International Conference on PEN-Plus in Africa

Members of the NCDI Poverty Network take a celebratory jump at the end of the Third International Conference on PEN-Plus in Africa.

Dr. Mohamed Janabi, director of the WHO Regional Office for Africa, delivers an address during the opening ceremony of the conference.

“The PEN-Plus strategy is an African response to an African reality, and this conference presents a valuable opportunity to speak with one voice on health investment and the future of noncommunicable disease services,” said the honorable Mohamed Mchengerwa, Tanzania’s minister of health, who provided the keynote address at the Third International Conference on PEN-Plus in Africa.

For many participants, the Third International Conference on PEN-Plus in Africa, held in Dar es Salaam in June 2026, represented a kind of homecoming. Some had attended the previous two conferences, the first in Dar es Salaam in 2024 and the second in Abuja in 2025. Others were reuniting with far-flung teammates and long-time collaborators. And for the hundreds of first-time participants, the conference provided opportunities to learn best practices in initiating and implementing PEN-Plus, to network, and to express their commitment to helping ensure that people living with severe noncommunicable diseases in resource-scarce settings can access the lifesaving care they need.

(Photos: Courtesy of the World Health Organization)