A trainee nurse in Dakar, Senegal, endured a 24-hour labour just before a nationwide medical strike, delivering a healthy daughter in a sweltering, overcrowded ward with intermittent electricity — an experience she says made clear that "the system itself is unwell." Medical union SAMES has been pushing since 2023 for more recruitment, better conditions and greater investment in hospitals outside the capital, after doctors, pharmacists and dental surgeons staged a two-day walkout in September 2026. The crisis is compounded by a heavy public debt burden — estimated by the IMF at 132 percent of GDP — and cuts to US foreign aid that have hit programmes covering HIV, malaria and reproductive health, leaving Senegal's government with little fiscal room to act despite an economy that grew 6.7 percent in 2025.