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Ghana has embarked on an initiative to reinforce the skills and capacity of health workers to provide basic emergency health services in low-resource settings.

Soon after Tanzania confirmed its first case of Marburg Virus Disease in February 2023, outbreak control measures were rolled out rapidly, with the country drawing on outbreak readiness capacity built up and reinforced in recent months. The efforts by the national health authorities, health workers and communities helped to end the outbreak in just around three months.

Maputo – Delivering polio vaccines to every district of the African Region is a complex undertaking, as national authorities and health partners fighting polio in Mozambique know only too well.

In the health district of Baga Sola in Chad’s western Lake province, mobile clinics have played a pivotal role in ensuring that the country’s most vulnerable populations can access COVID-19 vaccines. 

Over the past seven years, Rwanda has significantly reduced the burden of malaria, with the infection rate dropping from 409 cases per 1000 people in 2016 to just 76 cases per 1000 people in 2022. Malaria deaths also fell by more than 89% over the same period.

As immunization levels fell in over 100 countries worldwide between 2019 and 2021, in the largest sustained decline in childhood vaccinations in three decades, Ghana was not spared.

Since October 2022, Kenya’s arid northern region has been affected by a cholera outbreak triggered by the impact of a prolonged and severe drought. The country has recorded more than 7800 cases and 122 deaths as of 26 March 2023.

In Area 36, a densely populated neighbourhood of the capital of Malawi, Lilongwe, community volunteers and health workers keep a lifesaving Oral Rehydration Point (ORP) open every day, all day long.

Prolonged drought in parts of the greater Horn of Africa region has devastated millions of lives. In South and south-eastern Ethiopia, around 24 million people are grappling with severe food insecurity, malnutrition and extreme deprivation as their livelihoods have been severely affected following five straight seasons of failed rains.

With no new Ebola cases registered in the Ugandan capital since 14 November, the Kampala Capital City health authorities in collaboration with the Ministry of Health recently carried out a seven-day public awareness campaign to maintain the population’s vigilance to help end the outbreak. With support from World Health Organization (WHO), the Central Division authorities worked with more than 1500 community mobilizers and “boda boda” – motor taxi drivers – who went on a door-to-door drive every day to raise awareness, fight rumours and misinformation and ensure that people report any suspected Ebola cases.