Hope, horror and Covid-19: my 23 years as the Guardian’s health correspondent | Sarah Boseley

I've travelled the world covering everything from HIV to MMR to Ebola... and then Covid came along. These are stories that changed me - and the world

She was tall, wrapped in a green patterned dress that clung to her legs and ended just above dusty flip-flops. In the bustling, sweltering market, Grace Mathanga looked at me appraisingly, as if to say: What have we here?" And I knew she was the one.

It was the end of 2002. I had flown to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, with excitement in my heart and fear of failure eating at my gut. I'd been the Guardian's health correspondent for a couple of years, and had written some big stories: about the Bristol babies inquiry into the deaths of small children during operations carried out by inadequate surgeons; about suicides on antidepressants, and fake cures for cancer. And I had harried the pharmaceutical industry over their prices and compromising payments to doctors. But now I had been dispatched to Africa in pursuit of an idea dreamed up by the then Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, a story with the potential to help save thousands of lives - if I could pull it off.