From the Indigenous doctor balancing traditional and western medicine to a father risking death to provide for his family in Gaza, these are some of the people whose determination and bravery stood out
In 2012, Adana Omágua Kambeba travelled 4,000km (2,500 miles) from her home in Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon, to take up a coveted place to study medicine at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in south-east Brazil. She became the first among her people, the Kambeba, or Omágua, to graduate in the field, still largely dominated by white elites. According to the 2022 census, Indigenous people represented 0.1% of those who graduated in medicine in Brazil.
Adana Kambeba uses the ancestral knowledge of her people alongside conventional medicine in her work. Photograph: Marizilda Cruppe/the Guardian
