Lusaka, 29th March 2016 - Zambia joined the rest of the international community to commemorate World TB Day under the theme “Unite to end TB.” The official launch of the commemorative activities took place in Ndola district on the copperbelt province on 23rd March 2016. The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Chitalu Chilufya was the Guest of Honour. In his statement to mark the World TB Day, Dr. Chilufya said that Zamia had a high TB burden of 638 per 100,000 population as indicated in the national TB prevalence survey of 2014.

Immunization advocates were part of the first ever Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa (MCIA) that brought many people together including leaders, health and Finance Ministers, technical experts, policymakers, donors and medias.  This article will presents you the voice of few advocates, who have been participated on MCIA, and showed their dedication, commitment and energy to continue promoting immunization in Africa.

The civil society organizations (CSOs) met in Addis for a full day meeting on 23rd of February, 2016 to discuss their role in holding governments accountable to improve vaccine access and coverage in Africa in line with the Global Vaccine Action Plan. Key conclusions from the meeting as well as the CSOs’ declaration on immunization presented at the Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa (MCIA). So far as of march 2016, over 80 organizations endorsed the CSOs’ declaration on immunization to show their commitment to these goals.  

The Ethiopia Ministry of Health planned to conduct a Measles vaccination in a next few weeks in a high risk woredas of Oromia, Amhara, Afar, Somali, Tigray, SNNPR, Harari, Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions and Dire Dawa City Administration. The campaign aimed to respond to the measles outbreaks occurred in some localities of the country.

The national level command post decided to integrate measles campaign with the last polio NID with tOPV before the switch to bOPV to use the advantage of operational cost of polio budget and the preparatory activities are underway.

World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, has re-iterated his appeal to Member States to work with all stakeholders in order to ensure maximum coverage of the region with appropriate strategies to prevent and control tuberculosis (TB).

"TB is curable and medicines are available with support of WHO and partners. It is therefore unacceptable that anyone should still be dying of TB today", Dr Sambo said in his message released in Brazzaville on the occasion of World TB to be observed on 24 March.

Maiduguri, 23 March 2016 - The Governors of the three (3) security compromised states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe in the north east zone have reaffirmed their commitment to building resilience towards certification of  polio eradication in 2017 and beyond, through conscious efforts of strengthening routine immunization (RI) and investing more resources towards  the delivery of primary healthcare.

The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOH&SW) in the Gambia in collaboration with WHO and MRC joined the rest of the international Community to commemorate World Tuberculosis Day (WTBD) on the 24th March. The theme for this year was “Unite to End TB”.

As part of activities to mark this important day a Press briefing was organized for the media fraternity and attended by partners. The event was hosted by the National Leprosy and TB office in Kanifing. 

Abuja, 24 March 2016 - Nigeria joins the rest of the world to celebrate the World Tuberculosis Day on 24 March 2016. The theme for this year’s celebration is “Unite to End TB” in consonance with the global focus to sensitize governments and stakeholders on the huge gap of undetected tuberculosis (TB) cases globally. The overriding objective aims to encourage programmes to implement active case finding activities “to find and treat” missing cases of the disease.

2016 marks the beginning of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) era. Ethiopia is making progress in tackling tuberculosis (TB), the leading infectious disease killer along with HIV.

On 24 March 2016, Malawi joined the rest of the world in commemorating 2016 World TB Day whose theme is ‘Unite to End TB.’ The national launch took place on 24 March at Manica ground, in Balaka. Speaking to the audience the Honorable Minister of Health and guest of honor, Dr Peter Kumpalume, MP, acknowledged receipt of financial support from Global Fund. “We know that TB is a major public health problem but it is inexcusable that anyone should die of TB today because we know that it can be detected and cured for less than $100. The resources are now available.