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As part of the South African Government’s commitment for ensuring Universal Health Coverage (UHC), draft National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill was recently passed by the cabinet; the goal of the bill is to facilitate health systems and financing reforms towards enhanced access to quality health services without financial hardship in the country. As a demonstration of the highest level political leadership for UHC, the President of South Africa hosted the ‘Presidential Health Summit’ on the 19th and 20th October 2018 in Johannesburg. The purpose of the Summit was to engage with stakeholders to deliberate on the challenges in the health sector and to collectively define the roadmap for South Africa’s journey towards UHC with the NHI as entry point.

He smiled and giggled with glitter. Riziki and Juma had eagerly looked forward to meeting their first baby - so when he was born, everything stopped. At least for a few days.

Aiming to identify emerging environmental threats to people’s health and agree on a strategic action plan for the region, African Ministers of health and environment will meet for the Third Interministerial Conference on Health and Environment from 6 to 9 November in Libreville, Gabon. The conference jointly organized by the government of Gabon, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Environment will discuss how to turn health and environmental policies into action.

Just under three weeks of having landed in South Africa as the new World Health Organization (WHO) Country Representative in South Africa, Dr Akpaka Kalu, has already held a series of introductory meetings with United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator (RC), Ms Nardos Bekele-Thomas; South Africa’s Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi; Member of the Executive Committee for Health for the KwaZulu National Provincial Department, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo; KwaZulu Natal Province Head of Health, Dr Musa Gumede; and the University of KwaZulu Natal WHO Collaborating Centre for Educating Nurses and Midwives in Problem-solving. Beyond introducing himself, Dr Kalu also focused on learning about South Africa’s state of health from the key informants and share WHO’s mandate of supporting member states in improving their health outcomes; affirming that WHO would continue to support the national health system in three investment pillars: normative guidance; implementation support; and generation and use of evidence to support implementation and guide policies and strategies.