Correspondent / behind the news

In April, AFP distributed heart-rending photographs of 15-month-old Roona Begum, her head so swollen due to an untreated condition that she couldn’t even sit up. Offers of help poured in, and within days a fund had been created and a top surgeon in New Delhi offered to take her on as a patient without charge. AFP followed Roona into surgery on Wednesday, and the results are very promising (AFP Photo/R. Schmidt).

It happens all the time: a newspaper publishes a photo of a child living in hard-scrabble poverty who is stricken by a disfiguring, possibly life-threatening condition or injury. The image is heart-rending, and people around the world ask: “How can I help?” CORRESPONDENT editor Marlowe Hood looks at recent photos from the AFP archives that have made a difference. 

The vicious gang rape in India’s capital in December of a 23-year old woman, who later died of her injuries, sparked revulsion and mass protests in a country where rampant sex attacks had, up to then, received scant notice from the justice system or the media. AFP New Delhi correspondent Rupam Jain Nair reflects on why this case has become a watershed, and how it has changed her approach to the issue and, perhaps, her job.(AFP PHOTO/ Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)

The big gulp: Fishy medicine

For the last 161 years, members of the Bathini Goud family in Hyderabad, India have administered a unique, squirming “fish medicine” to an ever-larger throng on a couple of auspicious days in June. The medicine, which supposedly cures to asthma and other breathing disorders, is based on a secret herb formula, and the event draws thousands of people from all over the country. A small wad of the yellowish paste is placed in the mouth of a live murrel fish, which is then slipped down the throat of the patient. The quasi-ritual practice falls on Mrigasira Karti, the day marking the onset of the annual monsoon. AFP photographer Noah Seelam covered the story. But did he swallow the fish?  

(AFP Photo/Manan Vatsyayana)

Venus revealed

"I got up at 5 a.m. to shoot a major astronomical event that will only happen once this century: the Venus transit in front of the Sun," reports New Delhi-based AFP photographer Manan Vatsyayana . "Armed with my 600mm telephoto lens and must-use solar film, my idea was to shoot the transit with some old Delhi architecture and monuments in the foreground. I visited almost all the monuments I could think of trying to find the perfect spot, but it was a cloudy morning and I found myself fast running out of ideas..."