Dr Deise Catamo was a neurology resident at Maputo Central Hospital when her maternal grandmother, Mrs Rossana Suleimane, suffered a stroke in her sleep, (wake up stroke). When she received a call at the hospital to say grandma wasn’t speaking, Deise instructed her family to rush Mrs Suleimane to the hospital where her professor and mentor, Dr Elder Lorenzo Rosales, confirmed an ischemic stroke.
Early recognition meant treatment could start right away.
Intravenous thrombolysis is generally not available in Mozambique hospitals, so Mrs Suleimane’s treatment centered on the careful management of her blood pressure, temperature, and blood glucose levels.
Deise spent the night by her grandmother’s bedside. As she watched over her, a troubling thought took hold: “She is lucky, she has me, and I am here. What about the people who don’t have me, what do they do?”
She answered that question in 2022 when, in the final year of her specialization at Portugal’s University of Algarve, she embarked on a PhD in stroke. Her mission was clear: to understand the occurrence of stroke in Maputo and identify the factors that determine patient outcomes.
The result was Mozambique’s first standardized stroke treatment protocol, formalizing many of the principles that had guided her grandmother’s care. The goal was to prevent complications during the acute phase of stroke by organizing and optimizing the resources already available.
The protocol was adopted across Maputo, and stroke mortality fell by 40 percent in a single year.
‘Do not fear no as an answer’
“It’s a dream, a snowball,” Deise says, trying to explain how at 36 she has come to define stroke care transformation in one of the world’s poorest countries. “I don’t know how I got here.”
But there’s a lot to read between the lines of this piece of advice: “Do not fear no as an answer.”
The nos have come from policy makers, government officials, and the gatekeepers of scientific journals. But Deise doesn’t linger outside closed doors – she would rather talk about the yeses that got her this far.
To begin with there was the yes from Eduardo Mondlane University where she studied medicine, began her residency, and thrived under the mentorship of Prof Alberto Damasceno, leader of the medical faculty’s clinical cardiovascular research unit.
Next, there was a big yes from the University of Algarve in southernmost Portugal where she started her doctoral studies even before she’d completed her residency.
A decisive yes came from Professor Hipólito Nzwalo, a Mozambique-born neurologist, stroke researcher, and director of Algarve University’s PhD Program in Clinical and Translational Medicine. In him, Deise saw “a brilliant man, I wanted to be like him”.
There was a significant yes from her PhD funders, the Schlumberger Foundation, whose Faculty for the Future program aims to build a community of female role models in STEM.
There was a yes from the African Stroke Organization of which Deise is a founding member and where she serves on the steering committee.
A yes from the World Stroke Organization where Deise is a cohort 3 participant in the Future Leaders Program.
And a forward-looking yes from former WSO president and global stroke reformer Prof Sheila Martins who is supervising her studies in vascular neurology, and who, with Dr Ismália de Souza, supports efforts to develop a collective of Portuguese-speaking African stroke doctors.
Educating Deise
Now you have met Deise’s professional network, let us introduce the people closest to her heart. She was raised in Maputo with her brother, Yuri Catamo, whose own brilliant career has taken him to the Netherlands where he works for a global powerhouse. Her strongest connection is with her mother, Sandra Rijo, daughter of Rossana Suleimane and the late Luis Carreira Rijo, the grandfather who taught Deise to “be who I am, to be decent and respect others”.
Deise describes her mother as her mirror: she wants to honour her but not repeat a sometimes ill-starred story.
An asthmatic child, Deise was frequently in hospital where she remembers seeing “angels helping people and helping me”. Her desire to some day become an angel herself was reinforced at the age of four by a toy stethoscope – a gift from Raufa Catamo, mother of Deise’s father Gulamo Catamo – with which the family pets were regularly examined. Her 11-year-old son Danill Vaz completes the circle around her.
Deise’s education reads like a map of Mozambique’s struggle for freedom. She attended Escola Primária Completa 3 de Fevereiro, whose name honours the men and women who sacrificed their lives for the country’s liberation and independence. Her secondary school was named after Francisco Manyanga, a resistance fighter with the Mozambique Liberation Front, Frelimo. Her university bears the name of Frelimo founder, Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane.
An important chapter in her education came at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a global medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters, and exclusion from healthcare. It was here she encountered some of medicine’s most complex patients including people living with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and discovered her love for research.
Deise joined MSF as a research clinician in 2017 and was soon promoted to research coordinator. “At MSF I grew up a lot professionally and personally,” she says. “I learnt to understand that patients were not only their conditions. Were they mothers or fathers? Could they eat? Who was waiting for them at home?”
The answers changed the way she saw the world. But when she passed her entrance exam and was accepted into neurology, Deise traded a comfortable life for a dream.
‘I know why I’m breathing’
The reduction in stroke mortality from 50 percent in 2024 to 30 percent in 2025, simply by using what they have, offers a glimpse into what may be possible. The recognition, finally, by the Mozambique Ministry of Health, of stroke as a priority now unlocks new opportunities to strengthen stroke services, expand training, and give life a chance. A stroke unit is the next priority but the dream is bigger still.
Believing that change starts with policy, Deise favours a top-down strategy to change outcomes for her country’s 30 million people and deliver her vision for better stroke care in Mozambique, in Africa, and all around the world.
She has discovered a love and a gift for policy and advocacy, because they turn individual resolve into systems others can depend on.
“I am very happy and lucky to know why I am breathing,” Deise says. “A lot of people don’t know why they are alive.”
