Gambia News

Banjul, 12 December 2011 -- The Honourable Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Fatim Badjie, this morning launched the national measles vaccination campaign at the Kanifing Municipal Council Headquarters. An estimated 310735 children between 9 and 59 months are targeted for this exercise. Vitamin A supplementation for the 6 - 59 months old, representing a target population of 329014 children, will also be carried out simultaneously during the one week exercise which ends on Sunday, 18th of December 2011.

Banjul, 15 June 2012 -- The WHO Country Office (WCO) concluded a two-day staff retreat at Seaport Residence Hotel in Bijilo, yesterday. The retreat, better described as a workshop, was held on 13 - 14 June 2012, and was attended by the WR, programme officers and two staff from the Country Support Unit (CSU).

The main objectives of the meeting were:

Banjul, 1 June 2012 -- “Smoking kills” “By smoking, you are committing suicide” “Say No to tobacco”. These were some of the slogans teachers and students of Brufut Lower Basic School (BLBS) and the local community sang as they took to the streets of Brufut village to commemorate World No-Tobacco Day.

“Move for Health Initiative”

Banjul, 25 May 2012 -- Hundreds of people from different walks of life - students, teachers, Ministry of Health and WHO staff, volunteers, media personnel, community and opinion leaders, men and women – took to the streets of Brufut town yesterday to participate in a five-kilometer walk marking the launching of “Move for Health Initiative”.

This initiative, conceived by SCANAID Senior Secondary School, is one of the bye-products of the recently concluded WHO Health Academy Project in the Gambia.

Banjul, 17 May 2012 -- The WHO Country Office (WCO) yesterday briefed the Gambian delegation to the 65th World Health Assembly (WHA). “Such a briefing session is now a tradition of the WCO to prepare country delegates to this important global WHO governing body”, Dr Thomas Sukwa, WHO Representative (WR) to the Gambia, reiterated in welcoming delegates to the WCO.

Banjul, 14 May 2012 -- The last week of April 2012 witnessed two important health events in the Gambia. The first was World Malaria Day and the second, a sub-regional laboratory training workshop on pneumococcal surveillance and pediatric bacterial meningitis.

Banjul, 09 April 2012 -- During the past couple of weeks The Gambia had been actively engaged in a series of international health events – synchronized polio NIDs, World TB Day and World Health Day respectively. The first in the series was the successful conduct of National Immunization Days against polio (NIDs) from 23 to 26 March 2012.

Banjul, 17 January 2012 -- “We in the education sector believe that the learner needs to be given room for self-exploration and application of what is learnt rather than being a passive recipient. This is exactly what the WHO Health Academy Project is trying to achieve”. These were the words of the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Baboucarr Bouy, at a recent ceremony marking the end of a countrywide inter-secondary school competition on the WHO Health Academy Project (HAP).

Advocacy visit

The Gambia, a country in West Africa is preparing to introduce the New meningococcal Vaccine « MenAfriVac », by mid-november 2013. In preparation to this public health event, an advocacy mission was conducted in Banjul to meet with the national authorities and the stakeholders.

Banjul, 14 august 2013 -- The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has, this afternoon, formally introduced the Rotavirus vaccine into the national immunization programme. This is the newest vaccine introduced into the national immunization programme and the eleventh since establishment of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in the late 1970s. It is also the third since 2009. Pneumococcal vaccine and the second dose of the measles vaccine were introduced in 2009 and 2012 respectively.