The signs
are everywhere, across the continent: Africa is finding African approaches to
solving its health problems. In Uganda, 50 percent of all HIV/AIDS patients have
been reached with life-saving antiretroviral medicine through an innovative
programme that trains nurses to do some of the work traditionally done by
doctors and community health workers to take on some of the work of nurses. In
Mali, community cost-sharing schemes have provided 35 of the country’s 57
community health centres with staff trained to deliver babies and perform
emergency caesarean sections, making skilled obstetric care available to
thousands of women who could not previously afford it. In Rwanda, a police-led
road safety campaign, which has included introduction of fines for failure to
wear seatbelts or helmets, resulted in a drop of nearly one quarter in the
number of deaths from road traffic injuries in a single year. And in South
Africa, a health-care train routinely transports young doctors and final-year
medical students to isolated farming areas that would otherwise have no access
to basic medical services. To date the train has provided health care to half a
million people and health screening and education to an additional 800,000.
“Africa confronts the world’s most dramatic public health crisis, but this
report shows there are public health solutions that work in the African setting.
These can be extended to all Africans in need, if governments build on lessons
learnt from successful interventions while seeking better coordination with the
efforts of international partners”, said Alpha Oumar Konar, Chairman of the
Commission of the African Union. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of
key public health issues and progress made on them in the Africa
Region.