Accra, Ghana - A two-day meeting for the Neglected Tropical Disease Regional Programme Review Group (NTD-RPRG) on Preventive Chemotherapy Accra, Ghana (18-19 April 2016) was held in Accra, Ghana.

The purpose of the meeting was to advise the Regional NTD programme on country NTD plans, interventions and results for scaling up/down large scale preventive chemotherapy and evaluating impact of programmes towards the 2020 goals. 

Accra, 20 April 2016 – The Ministry of Health and WHO with support from Sanofi Espoir Foundation conducted a national review of the Fight Against Epilepsy Initiative, WHO Pilot Programme on Reducing Epilepsy Treatment Gap was conducted on 19 April 2016. The review was intended to take an in-depth look at the performance of the programme over the past 4 years (2012 to 2015) within the context of the large numbers of epilepsy cases (270 000) and a treatment gap estimated at 85% and agree on areas of scale up.

Abuja, 20 April 2016 - Indications are rife that the immunity gaps identified in 70 local government areas (LGAs) located in 11 southern states of Nigeria will soon be reduced. The optimism follows the implementation of Short Interval Additional Doses (SIAD) strategy in the affected states which culminated in the vaccination of over six (6) million children with the last batch of trivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (tOPV) on the eve of the global switch to bivalent OPV.

Blantyre, Malawi - From 18 to 23 April 2016 the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the WHO implemented the first training session for the management of District Health Systems for the District Health Management Teams (DHMT) from the South West and South East health zones representing 13 districts. The training took place at the Malawi Sun Hotel, in Blantyre. The guest of honor was Mrs Chimwemwe Banda, Principal Secretary, MOH and among the distinguished guests was Dr Eugene Nyarko, WHO Representative.

19 April 2016 – As Angola grapples with its worst yellow fever outbreak in decades, the Ministry of Health, with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners have extended the vaccination campaign beyond the capital Luanda into Huambo and Benguela – 2 of the other 5 provinces reporting local transmission.

Kigali, 18 April 2016 – On 04 April 2016, the Government of Rwanda with support from WHO and immunization partners made history as the first country in the African Region to introduce bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (bOPV) in place of the trivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (tOPV) into the schedule of the routine immunization programme for all children under the age of one.

Victoria, Seychelles, 17 April 2016 - will remain an important date in the history of immunisation in Seychelles. This is because April 17th was Seychelles national ‘Switch’ date, where the country ceased the use of all trivalent oral polio vaccine (tOPV) and started using bivalent oral polio vaccine (bOPV). Following Rwanda, Seychelles became the second country in Africa to ‘switch’.

The East African Advanced Course on Pharmacovigilance was held in Asmara, Eritrea from 10th to 16th April 2016 under the theme “Developing Proactive Pharmacovigilance and Risk Management Strategies in East Africa”. This course brought together 81 participants from 10 African countries acting in their individual capacities as experts and/or stakeholders in pharmacovigilance (PV) in Africa and six countries from Asia, USA and Europe. 

WHO joined the East African Diabetes Study Group (EADSG) in an NCD symposium held recently to share best practices and progress of NCD interventions across countries. The two day symposium was attended by among others, delegates from the Diabetes Study group, World Diabetes Foundation, Ministries of Health of 15 countries in East, Central and Southern Africa, the African Union, NCD Alliance, WHO country offices, WHO Inter country Support Team and the Regional Office for Africa.

The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoHSW) with the support of the World Health Organization has launched the first ever national cessation guidelines for tobacco dependence.