Programmes and Clusters News

7 November 2019 | Polio

Fighting polio, one SMS at a time!

Health workers and community volunteers in remote and security-compromised areas across 10 African countries now rely on an SMS-based application to ferret out any possible poliovirus hiding in their midst.

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6 November 2019 | Immunization Vaccines

Nine African countries agree to begin journey towards pooled procurement to increase their access to affordable life-saving vaccines

Nine middle-income countries in Africa have agreed to work towards pooled procurement mechanisms by first sharing vital information on their vaccine purchasing practices, including the prices they pay and their suppliers. Sharing information and ultimately pooling their orders will better leverage their individual purchasing power and thus strengthen their vaccine security and increase their access to affordable life-saving vaccines.

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3 November 2019 | Ebola Disease

The Ministry of Health and the United Nations condemn attack on health worker supporting the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The interministerial technical secretariat of the response to the Ebola outbreak, the Ministry of Health and their partners from the United Nations (the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and  the United Nations Emergency Ebola Response Operations (UNEERO)) condemn in the strongest possible terms the violence that took place last night in Lwemba in Ituri Province, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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1 November 2019 | Ebola Disease

Moving from huge fears to busloads of visitors: A Guinean doctor remembers overcoming community mistrust to treat Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Marie Claire Lamah is a doctor from the West Africa country of Guinea, whose people experienced a serious Ebola epidemic in 2014–2016. Many doctors and epidemiologists from Guinea have offered their skills and experience, through World Health Organization (WHO) teams, to other nations battling outbreaks of contagious disease.

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29 October 2019 | Sexual and Reproductive Health

Regional research prioritization exercise on SRHR with focus on safe abortion and post-abortion care, including in humanitarian settings

Universal access to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) is one of the key components of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 and 5 and contributes to the achievement of all the other SDGs. Sadly however, in Africa the SRHR goals are those that made little progress during the MDG era where no country in the African Region achieved the target on universal access to reproductive health.

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21 October 2019 | Ebola Disease Emergencies

Blandine Kazade: The nurse who saved a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

In the Ebola epidemiological zones in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, health care workers must stay alert, vigilant and careful. An Ebola infection could find them before they realize it is circulating within a patient who just came for treatment. Of the 162 health workers infected since the start of this tenth outbreak in August 2018, 65 died; 63%, or 102 of them, were nurses.

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