I was commissioned by Helen Keller International to go out to Burkina Faso to cover their trachoma and nutrition projects.
Whilst there it became very apparent that the entire west of Africa was in the grip of a massive cholera epidemic with over 132,000 people infected, 2,500 fatalities and the figures were rising.

I hooked up with a local TV journalist and together we covered the story. This photo was taken when visiting one of the homes infected with cholera with a disinfection team in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The boy was both afraid of the team, and I think ashamed at the stigma of having an “unclean” home but he was also proud and defiantly showed us this with the expression in his eyes.


I submitted the package of photos plus text to Gamma in Paris but unfortunately the story was never published…it coincided with the breaking Bird-flu epidemic in China and so it was never picked up.

George S de Blonsky was born in London to Greek /Russian parents though he spent his childhood in Greece. He graduated from the LCP, Post-Graduate in Photojournalism in 1998, since when he has supported himself as a freelance through corporate/PR photography, stringing for Gamma-Presse in Paris and researching and photographing his own stories, selling them mostly to European publications.

In 2004 he was privileged enough to be accredited for the Summer Paralympic Games in Athens and in 2006 followed up covering the Winter Paralympic Games in Torino shooting for a Japanese agency, Kanpara Press.

Photographer since 1998, EPUK member since 2006.